Bexhill man guilty of nuisance calls to police

James Wilson, 42, of Barnabas Court, was charged with persistently making nuisance calls to the police 101 number between October 1 and November 28, 2015.

A Sussex Police spokesman said the calls resulted in a ‘talk time’ of more than three hours.

Wilson was found guilty of the offence when he appeared at Hastings Magistrates’ Court on May 13.

Last month he was sentenced to a 12-month community order, ordered to pay £300 costs and a £60 surcharge to fund victim services.

A spokeswoman said Wilson had already been given a 12-month conditional discharge imposed earlier in 2015 for his persistent communications to police.

Call taker Sarah-Louise Gliddon said: “James Wilson chose to ignore his conditions imposed in 2015 to only contact police to report a new incident or emergency which required a police response.

“We have now developed an effective process in how we deal with persistent callers across Sussex by actively pursuing them and issuing them with warnings about how their unnecessary contact affects our ability to service other members of the public trying to report police incidents on the 101 number and 999 emergency lines.

“Time spent dealing with unnecessary calls means it can take us longer to get to those people who need our help the most, so we will continue to issue these warnings and prosecute if they are ignored.”

The force began monitoring repeat nuisance callers in March, 2014, to reduce the amount of time that was being wasted that could be spent on dealing with genuine issues.

On average, Sussex Police receives around 2,000 calls a day in the summer along with 1,500 emails a week and 1,500 online crime reports a month.

In February this year alone the force received 2,052 calls from persistent callers.

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