999 BSL Annual Report 2024 – 2025

The 999 BSL Emergency Video Relay Service continues to perform effectively, providing critical access to the emergency services for Deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users across the U.K. Sign Language Interactions (SLi) complies with the Ofcom Approval Criteria for Emergency Video Relay Service Providers on an ongoing basis, as detailed later in this report.
In the third year of operation, the 999 BSL service received approximately 18,000 calls (an average of 49 calls per day), a 22% decrease on the previous year. The most typical* caller waiting time across all calls was just 3 seconds.
SLi welcomed the report that Ofcom published in May 2025, Ex Post Evaluation of the Emergency Video Relay Regulation, which detailed several findings, including that:
- “999 BSL is delivering beneficial outcomes and is an essential service for deaf BSL users.”
- “We judge that at least two lives are saved per year because of the 999 BSL service’s availability.”