How did Merseyside cope on Saturday?

During England’s opening World Cup game against the USA on Saturday, Merseyside Police say they saw a 37.5 per cent drop in the number of 999 and non-emergency calls compared to the equivalent game in the 2006 World Cup.

Between the hours of 7am on Saturday, June 12 and 7am on Sunday, June 13 Merseyside Police received a total of 2,477 calls.

Of those, 1,082 were emergency calls and 1,395 were non-emergency calls.

During the same period on the day of England's first match in the 2006 World Cup, Merseyside Police received a total of 3,963 calls.

Superintendent Nick Phillips, from Merseyside Police's Call and Crime Recording Bureau, said: "The calls we received on the day of England's first World Cup match were typical of those we would receive on any other Saturday in June, and were actually very slightly lower than an average Saturday.

"Our Call Handlers answered 97.8 per cent of 999 calls within the target time of 10 secs and 95.3 per cent of non-emergency calls within the target time of 30 seconds, which is an excellent result and well above the target level."

That is in contrast to the North West Ambulance Service who received more than 650 emergency calls between 7pm Saturday and 7am Sunday across Cheshire and Merseyside which is an increase of 23% compared to a usual weekend.

Derek Cartwright, Director of Paramedic Emergency Service at NWAS, said: “During an event like the World Cup, activity is always increased however we anticipated this surge in demand and managed it appropriately by increasing resources.

“All our staff worked hard both in control rooms managing emergency calls and deploying vehicles, and on frontline vehicles tending to patients."