Met Police nuisance 999 calls: Annoying bus drivers and tardy pub grub

Scotland Yard recorded 21,733 nuisance 999 calls in the first 11 months of the year, including one about a whistling bus driver

A caller who was worried that KFC had run out of chicken and a woman complaining about her bus driver's whistling were among the nuisance 999 calls made to the Met Police this year.

The force recorded 21,733 such calls out of the two million it received between 1 January and 30 November.

Among the other callers was somebody complaining that breakfast had been served too slowly in a London pub.

Ch Supt David Jackson said unnecessary calls "take away police resources".

To highlight the problem, the Met has released details of a number of nuisance calls 999 staff have dealt with.

These included:

• A person calling 999 in March to say KFC had run out of chicken

• A man phoning the Met on 6 July complaining that a bus driver had shut the door in his face - actually, the bus had broken down and nobody was allowed to board

• A man calling to report that his breakfast had not been served quickly enough at a pub on 19 September

• A woman on a bus calling the Met in November to complain that the driver had been "whistling all the trip" and should be more "respectful"

• A man phoning police to tell them he was having an argument with a female driver about who had the right of way on a road

Ch Supt Jackson said police were "already stretched" without the non-emergency calls.

"During the time that our call handlers are dealing with these time-wasting calls, a member of the public could be in real danger," he said.