GWENT Police have admitted they don’t know how many 999 calls were not recorded because of a technical fault that lasted at least seven months.

A Freedom of information request by the South Wales Argus revealed the fault was first spotted in November 2017.

It has been confirmed by Gwent Police that the fault, which caused some 999 calls to not be recorded, could have gone unnoticed before then.

Although police stressed not all calls went unrecorded during the period from November, 2017 to May, 2018, they do not know how many of the 44,256 calls placed during that period were not recorded.

The South Wales Argus previously reported on the case of 53-year-old father of four Neil Austin, of Brynmawr, whose back was broken during an attack at his home in February this year.

A 999 call made by his wife while the attack was happening was not recorded, and could not be used as evidence in court.

Mr Austin believes the fault led to his attacker being able to plead guilty to a lesser offence, possibly escaping jail time as a consequence.

District Crown Prosecutor for Gwent and the Glamorgan valleys, Tony Dicken, explained why 999 calls are considered vital for the Crown Prosecution Service when they are putting a case together.

“We obviously need to know if a 999 call was made and it can help to know contents of that call,” explained Mr Dicken.

“They can be used to demonstrate the timing, who made the call or when it was made. The call itself can be used to hear the distress of the victim making the call.

“Effectively you can sometimes hear the crime being committed in the background.

“If the incident is effectively ongoing when the call is made it can be important in a similar way to CCTV of a crime being committed.

“Recordings of 999 calls are very important because they can amount to some very good evidence, but it depends on the case obviously.

“We’re under an obligation to disclose anything that could help the defence, and we’re duty bound to disclose a 999 call whether it has any impact on our case or not.

“If there has been a 999 call made we would at the very least need that on the schedule of unused material and for the police to disclose to us what the call was about.”

Gwent Police explained that the fault, which has now been fixed, did not become apparent in the system until an affected 999 call was recording was requested.

Freedom of Information Officers added that to search through every call received during that period to check if it was recorded would be a “mammoth task”.

A Gwent Police Spokesman said: “In January 2018, Gwent Police became aware of a technical fault to call recordings which had occurred in November 2017.

“Due to the complex nature of this fault, operators were not aware of the problem until a request for one particular call recording had been made. Not all calls were affected by the fault.

“Action was then immediately taken to resolve the issues during January and February, and this led to a system rebuild for the affected software in February 2018.

“Between February and May 2018, a small number of isolated recording faults were identified as part of ongoing maintenance of the new system, but these were not caused by the original failure and were quickly fixed.”