Sussex Police were inundated with 70,000 extra 999 calls last year because of the upsurge in mobile phone use.

A new report says officers still managed to hit their target of answering nine out of ten calls within ten seconds.

The annual report also reveals officers took an average of 11.3 days off sick last year, a slight increase on the previous 12 months but below the national average of 12.2 days.

The force's 999 call answering performance is better than the national average of 87.1 per cent and a big improvement on last year, when slightly more than eight out of every ten calls were answered on time.

Superintendent Colin Crooks said he was delighted by the figures, which are included in the annual Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary Report.

He blamed the rise in calls on the increased use of mobile phones, both deliberate and accidental. In 1999/2000, the force received 201,365 calls. Last year it was 270,692.

Supt Crooks, who is in charge of Sussex's call-handling operation, said: "In the past, we would have had maybe one or two people ringing in the event of a road crash or another emergency.

"Now, because so many people have mobiles, we will get four or five. That is not a bad thing. We would not deter anyone from calling in a genuine emergency."

He said the force was working on a national solution to the problem of accidental 999 calls, often caused by mobile phones in people's pockets.