Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the (a) average call duration, (b) average waiting time and (c) the total number of calls wherein the person calling dropped the call, were to the NHS emergency advice service number 111 in (i) 2018, (ii) 2019, (iii) 2020 and (iv) 2021; what the average call duration has been over the last 12 months to 111; and how many calls to 111 were abandoned over the last 12 months.
The average call duration for NHS111 calls is not held centrally.
The average waiting time for NHS111 calls is only available for April – August 2021, and not for previous years. The average waiting from April to August 2021 was 271 seconds.
The total number of calls abandoned is only available for April – August 2021, which is 1,452,574. This data is not available for 2018, 2019, 2020 and current year to August, where only the number of calls abandoned after at least 30 seconds is available. This data is provided in the following table:
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021: January – August |
Calls abandoned after at least 30 seconds | 708,548 | 661,906 | 2,160,595 | 1,266,546 |
Source: NHS England
The total number of calls abandoned over the last 12 months is not available.