North Yorkshire Police chiefs are investigating whether one single non-emergency call number could be used as a gateway to a range of out-of-hours services that are unrelated to crime-fighting.

Chief Constable Della Cannings has instructed officers to look at the possibility of creating a "public service direct" call system that would meet a range of resident's needs.

She believes that North Yorkshire Police could pass on some of the cost of providing 24-hour call-handling by charging other public services such as local authorities for dealing with their calls.

Senior officers argue that many people contact the force for matters such as animals in distress, neighbour disputes and trading standards issues which are not necessarily best dealt with by the police.

But Ms Cannings said such a system, which could be similar to the NHS Direct health information service, would be "incredibly challenging", needing Government support and investment.

She said: "The ongoing talks with other agencies will continue and if there are opportunities for us to engage with them it would be very helpful.

"More than 80 per cent of our 999 calls are not emergency or policing matters and the bulk of our non-emergency calls are not policing matters either.

"What we want to do is work with other agencies to distribute the calls for other agencies to answer."

The force came under fire last week after plans to make a planned county-wide non-emergency number premium rate in a bid to raise extra funds were raised and then quickly dropped.

Officers want to end confusion among the public about the best way to contact the police in a non-urgent situation. The force currently has 11 main public numbers, which are directed to two call centres.

A City of York Council spokeswoman said: "The council set up the York Pride Action Line on 551551 last year as a one-stop contact for residents to report a wide range of street level problems from abandoned cars to graffiti.

"Although the council does offer out-of-hours support for reporting and dealing with noise nuisance, most of our contact numbers are only available during office hours, and a partnership with other agencies may be a way of addressing this."

Updated: 08:29 Tuesday, February 17, 2004