A woman who called emergency services 740 times in three months has been told to pay £2,000 compensation and is banned from calling 999 for five years except for a genuine emergency.
The woman, who has not been named after being sentenced to mental health rehabilitation, pleaded guilty at court earlier this month to persistently making use of a public communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety.
She has been sentenced to a 12 month community order, 15 days of rehabilitation activity and will receive mental health treatment.
The woman will also pay the compensation to East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) after her actions cost the NHS £13,276.
She called EMAS 97 times on Christmas Day last year.
Emergency operations commander Ian Brett was overseeing the control room on one occasion when the caller used three different phones to ring 68 times between midnight and 8am, which prevented three call handlers from taking real emergency calls.
Mr Brett said: “I was made aware of the caller as she was repeatedly pushing the redial button on two mobile phones and her landline.
“At one point, the caller placed her phones together so our 999 call handlers were talking to each other.
“This meant three of the 14 call handlers were committed to answering this one regular caller rather than a member of the community needing emergency medical help.
“At this time in the morning, fortunately we had enough staff on duty to handle the 999 calls without impacting other patients.
“However, if this was to occur later when the snow arrived and the demand increased there would have been a real threat to our ability to respond to patients in the community experiencing real medical emergencies.”
Frequent caller lead for EMAS Deborah Powell explained all 740 inappropriate emergency calls took place in three-and-a-half months between November 29 2017 and February 11 2018.
She said: “We will continue to prosecute those who misuse our service to ensure that the support is there for those who need it in a real medical emergency.
“By repeatedly making inappropriate calls to the 999 service during our busiest time of the year, this caller demonstrated flagrant disregard for others experiencing life threatening emergencies who genuinely need our help.
“We are pleased with the outcome of this case because it acknowledges the impact frequent callers such as this person have on our vital service and helps to protect ourselves and other emergency services from future inappropriate calls.
“We would urge people again to make the right 999 call and only phone us in a life threatening emergency.”
