AN UNDELIVERED takeaway, a request for a lift and a home lock-in are just some of the hoax 999 calls police emergency phone operators received last year.

The odd requests are amongst the strangest of approximately 421 hoax calls recorded from callers in the Swindon area throughout 2010.

Figures obtained by the Adver through a Freedom of Information request show that number represents just under half of 999 total calls identifed as hoaxes across Wiltshire up to 15 November last year.

Bob Tofield, deputy head of contact management at Wiltshire Police, said: “Hoax calls take up a disproportionate amount of a skilled operator’s time.”

On average Wiltshire police took 1,753 999 calls each week, with 1,071 becoming incident logs in Swindon. Each call takes six seconds to respond to.

Across the four policing areas of the town the East sector, including Eldene, Liden, the Parks and Walcot, accounted for the most nuisance phone calls with 144 last year, while the West sector, including Penhill, Pinehurst and Rodbourne accounted for 122 calls.

North Swindon, including Haydon Wick and Stratton, notched up 84 calls, closely followed by the town centre sector with 71.

Fifty-six of the callers in the first three months of last year left phone operators listening to silence at the other end of the phone and are likely to have been accidental, while 18 calls are also recorded as youths deliberately reporting false incidents.

The figures also suggest over the last five years police have clamped down on prank callers with six arrests and prosecutions across the county in 2010, three of these from Swindon. This is up from four in 2007 and none in 2006.

One Swindon resident, Joanne Sarah Cummings, of Covingham, even received an anti-social behaviour order in September last year following persistent abusive 999 calls.

The Asbo bans the 43-year-old from making calls to Wiltshire Police, the Great Western Ambulance Service or Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, except in the case of a genuine and immediate emergency, until September 2012.

Mr Tofield said the nuisance calls were a waste of valuable police time and could lead to a real emergency caller waiting longer than necessary.

“These take up a disproportionate amount of a skilled operator’s time. Wiltshire Police currently answers 94 per cent of all 999 calls within 10 seconds, if we did not have to deal with hoax calls our operators would be available to deal with the genuine 999 calls enabling us to answer more 999 calls within 10 seconds,” he said.

“When there is evidence of persistent hoax callers, depending on the evidence we are able to make an arrest, issue a fixed penalty and disconnect the phone that the call was made from."