More than 9,000 callers to 999 unable to get through in June outage, report finds

Government to introduce safeguards after incident in which no emergency calls were connected for 79 minutes

A glitch in the UK’s 999 network resulted in no callers getting through for nearly 80 minutes and led to more than 9,000 callers being unable to access emergency services by phone, according to a government report.

The government said a “complex software issue” affected BT’s 999 platform on Sunday 25 June last year, at first resulting in a “significant” proportion of calls disconnecting between 6.24am and 7.31am.