Closed petition Review how emergency services handle location data from the public.

Closed on 5 February 2022

Laws already exist on obtaining location data at handsets, and in telcos, but not on how emergency services handle location data provided verbally by the public. This is inconsistent, with some handling ordnance survey grid ref, latitude/longitude, and other formats. Some are not handled at all.

At present a caller cannot be sure they have the tools to reliably pass location data to emergency services as there is no defined minimum standard. There is also some serious concern that they are carrying out marketing activity for private companies, i.e. talking callers through downloading a commercial app, even in an emergency. I suggest handling at least O/S grid references should be a standard (by law), and private commercial apps should not be promoted in the middle of an emergency!