999 (emergency telephone number)
Countries and territories using the number include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Cook Island, Eswatini, Ghana, Guernsey, Hong Kong, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mauritius, Niue, Poland, Qatar, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, Seychelles, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe.
The system was introduced following a house fire in Wimpole Street on 10 November 1935, in which five women were killed.
[13] The initial scheme covered a 12-mile (19 km) radius around Oxford Circus[15] and the public were advised only to use it in an ongoing emergency if "for instance, the man in the flat next to yours is murdering his wife or you have seen a heavily masked cat burglar peering round the stack pipe of the local bank building.
"[16] The first arrest – for burglary – took place a week later and the scheme was extended to major cities after World War II and then to the whole of the UK in 1976.
[16] The 9-9-9 format was chosen based on the 'button A' and 'button B' design of pre-payment coin-operated public payphones in wide use (first introduced in 1925) which could be easily modified to allow free use of the 9 digit on the rotary dial in addition to the 0 digit (then used to call the operator), without allowing free use of numbers involving other digits; other combinations of free call 9 and 0 were later used for more purposes, including multiples of 9 (to access exchanges before subscriber trunk dialling came into use) as a fail-safe for attempted emergency calls, e.g. 9 or 99, reaching at least an operator.
This enables all users including the visually impaired to easily dial the emergency number.
It is also the case that it is relatively easy for 111, and other low-number sequences, to be called accidentally, including when transmission wires making momentary contact produce a pulse similar to dialling (e.g. when overhead cables touch in high winds).
101 was introduced for non-urgent calls to Police in England and Wales[21] and later extended to Scotland[22] and Northern Ireland.
[23] Trials of 111 as a number to access health services in the UK for urgent but not life-threatening cases began in England in 2010.
[28] It previously used 0845 46 47 but the rollout of 111 was completed,[28] following trials starting in 2016 [29] In 2008–2009, Nottinghamshire Police ran a successful pilot of Pegasus, a database containing the details of people with physical and learning disabilities or mental health problems, who have registered with the force because their disabilities make it difficult for them to give spoken details when calling the police.
Those registered on the database are issued with a personal identification number (PIN) that can be used in two ways.
By phone – either 999 or the force's non-emergency 101 number can be used – once a person is put through to the control room, they only need to say "Pegasus" and their PIN.
This problem is less of a concern with emergency numbers that use two different digits, such as 112 and 911, although on landlines 112 suffers much of the same risk of false generation as the 111 code which was considered and rejected when the original choice of 999 was made.
The GSM standard mandates that a user can dial 112 without unlocking the keypad, which can save time but also causes some accidental calls.
In some instances where there is still no clear response, the call may be put through to an automated system which asks the caller to press 55 if in danger.
On 6 October 1998, BT introduced a new system whereby all the information about the location of the calling telephone was transmitted electronically to the relevant service rather than having to be read out (with the possibility of errors).
In some situations there may be specific instructions on nearby signs to notify some other authority of an emergency before calling 999.
[40] On some occasions callers will be put through to the wrong area service – this is called a "misrouted nines".
Upon establishing the incident location, the emergency service operator will relay the information to the responsible force for their dispatch.
Although emergency SOS phones are placed along the hard shoulder on all motorways (and in emergency refuge areas on smart motorways) which automatically send location information to the National Highways regional control centre (RCC), most people involved in a road emergency call from their mobile phones and so need another way to identify their location.
Abandoned calls are filtered by emergency operators BT and Cable & Wireless, and are either disconnected or passed on to police.
If there is still no response, the operator will sometimes ask the caller to press the keypad or make a noise if they need assistance.
If there is no answer, the police service are likely to attend and if the line is disconnected without the caller telling the operator which service they need, they then make a decision to filter the call to police (if suspicious background noise) or clear the line.
[46] In 2024, Gibraltar adopted 999 as its emergency services number, for police, ambulance or fire and rescue; the Royal Gibraltar Police said this was chosen because the territory was closely aligned with the UK, with the aim in future being to have a unified control room.
[49] The services are provided under a national emergency help desk operated by the Bangladesh Police, which has been set up at a cost of Tk 60.50 crore.
Ongoing upgrading works are taking place to introduce the Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) for hospital exchanges, digital mapping to track the callers' locations and Computer Assisted Despatching (CAD) for online connectivity among the agencies providing the emergency services in the country.
The Kingdom of Eswatini uses the 999 emergency number for police contact only, and 975 for human trafficking reports.
