Nuisance 999 caller from Angmering fined by magistrates

Clive Solly called Sussex Police almost 200 times in six weeks on the 101 service as well as sending emails and using the force’s live chat system on the website.

A spokesman for Sussex Police said: “In April 2014 he was given a warning that he should only contact the force to report a new incident or an emergency that needed a police response.

“But the 37-year-old ignored the warning and continued to make unnecessary calls and send emails so was arrested on January 13.”

Solly, of Nursery Road, Angmering, was convicted of persistently making use of public communication network to cause annoyance and inconvenience to police when he appeared at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Friday (July 17).

He was fined £500 and ordered to pay £600 costs and a £50 victim surcharge.

Police said 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 May this year alone the force received 2,078 calls from persistent callers that took more than 97 hours to deal with.

Call-taker Sarah-Louise Gliddon said: “Clive Solly had been a persistent caller for a number of years and ignored the warning that he was wasting police time.

“Initially dealing with this caller has involved a lot of work, developing a simple but effective process, making arrests and resolving further attempted complaints but by doing this in the right way we achieved a successful outcome which has laid the direction in which we now deal with other persistent callers across Sussex.

“We now actively pursue persistent callers and issue 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 these warnings and prosecutions could be very useful.

“If you waste police time you could be prosecuted and, like Clive Solly, find yourself with a big bill.”

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