I went to visit the new Metcall central communications command centre in Lambeth that is now taking all of the emergency and non-emergency calls for the Merton, Croydon and Sutton areas. All the equipment is state-of-the-art and was very impressive.

A couple of years ago at the Merton Police Consultative Group, we had a presentation from Metcall. At that time one of the major complaints from residents was the length of time it took to get through to the police on a non-emergency call. This new system is addressing that problem and is now handling 25 per cent more calls than any boroughs were able to deal with before - sadly proving that very large numbers of people were not getting through to the police then.

There are three new centres in Bow, Hendon and Lambeth. They are responding to 90 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds and non-emergency calls within 30 seconds.

A few years ago it would have been impossible for the police to know on any one day who was doing what across London.

Now all operations are readily accessible at the touch of a button making intelligence sharing a real and important factor in the way things are currently handled at the centre.

Another key task they are now able to perform is in handling several emergency situations at the same time. They can do this because they can call on all available resources and have the technology to support this.

So, during a major crime scene they can bring together key information on their large plasma screens from helicopters, CCTV cameras, local media and digital appliances.

Having three centres allows the police to have emergency back-up. In the event of any one of the centres being temporarily out of service they are able to offer back-up support from one of the other centres within three minutes.

There are still a few local authorities left to go on to the new system but they are due to go on soon and then the whole of London will be fully accessible at the touch of a button. I am sure this is reassuring news for anyone who has struggled to get through to the police.

Of course, in Merton and across London now we have our Safer Neighbourhood teams who are making sure that local residents know about them and have their contact details. They are working hard to do this and hopefully many of our residents will contact them about non-emergency issues which will help to take the strain off the central London control function.

LINDA KIRBY Chairwoman Merton Community Police Consultative Group