A WOMAN rang 999 to ask for directions to Southamp-ton Central train station, police revealed today.

It was just one example of the tens of thousands of inappropriate calls to the emergency number in the past year.

So far this year police call handlers have dealt with more than 100,000 emergency 999 calls – but only 33 per cent of them actually required an urgent response.

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Call handlers who should be dealing with potentially life-saving calls are instead being bogged down with time-wasting non-emergencies.

They include a man who wanted officers to clear a bike from his front garden, a boy who wanted his bike unlocked and a caller who wanted to know how much dialling the non-emergency 101 number would cost her.

To coincide with today’s date (09/09/09), Hampshire police are reminding the public to only use 999 when it is an emergency.

Superintendent Julie Earle said: “Some 999 calls are clearly not emergencies.

“Such calls block the emergency lines, and even the few seconds it takes our operators to deal with these calls may stop someone with a genuine need for urgent police assistance from getting through to us quickly.”

Along with those who tie up the emergency lines with non-urgent matters, call handlers have also had to deal with almost 1,000 hoax calls.

Since April this year, more than 900 malicious calls have been handled, where hoaxers have intentionally reported fake incidents.

Supt Earle added: “Hoax calls mean that members of the public are dialling 999 with the clear intention to mislead the emergency services.

“At the time of the call my colleagues do not know that the information they are being given is incorrect, and we respond as quickly as we can to what appears to be a genuine emergency, only to find out that it is a hoax.

“This wastes time and resources and means that our resources are not available to deal with genuine emergencies that may really be a matter of life and death. Hoax calls are always highly irresponsible and in most circumstances will also be a criminal offence.”

South Central Ambulance Service, which every day takes 514 emergency 999 calls in Hampshire, is also calling on the public not to make inappropriate calls.