Cleveland Police in the North-East of England are set to outsource all 999 call operations to a private company in a bid to save millions of pounds as public sector budget cuts continue to pose implications, it has been widely reported.

Cleveland police will appoint a private sector partner to provide both control room and other backroom functions.

The decision, which has been criticised by the Police Federation, is believed to amount to a wholesale change that would make policing less accountable and leave private company employees in control of incidents on the streets, said chairman, Paul McKeever.

However, Cleveland’s chief constable, Sean Price defended the plan, the public would benefit from potential £20 million savings and the "modern methods" used by private companies would mean customer satisfaction would also be improved.

The chief constable also reinforced the importance of calls, insisting any new staff would be expected to meet national call handling standards by answering 90% of all switchboard calls within 30 seconds and all 999 calls within 10 seconds.

"We would rightly be held to account by the public, politicians and media should things go wrong, however this situation is not of our choice but we have to recognise the realities and unless we are able to continue modernising the way we operate we could in a very short time be facing the prospect of having to consider big cuts in both jobs and front-line policing,” he said.