Wiltshire Police is failing to meet call answering targets

Only one police force in the UK is meeting the target - Avon and Somerset Police was the only force to meet the standard, according to national statistics released for the first time by the Home Office.

However, the force says that emergency calls are answered in an average of 16.63 seconds, slightly longer than the national average response time of 16.1 seconds.

Wiltshire Police added that the Home Office statistics do not account for technical issues around how the telecomes provider processes incoming calls, which is “recognised nationally” and discussions are “ongoing” to resolve.

Philip Wilkinson, Wiltshire’s police and crime commissioner, has acknowledged these statistics are not where he would like and says they must see improvements "in weeks, not months". 

"Quite rightly those ringing 999 in an emergency expect their calls to be answered immediately and what today’s league tables show is these calls aren’t being answered as quickly as they should be by Wiltshire Police," he added.

Chief Inspector Doug Downing, who runs Wiltshire Police’s Contact Centre, said: “Regardless of how call times are measured, we remain committed to reducing call waiting times for the public. Our dedicated staff are working incredibly hard to achieve this.

“Last month, our operators received more than 6,500 999 telephone calls. Our number one priority remains the assessment of threat, harm, risk, and identifying vulnerability at the first point of contact. But a close second is rapidly responding to 999 calls.

“As part of our drive to reduce call times, we are exploring new systems which should help reduce some of the demand on our call handlers, by allowing officers to update incident logs themselves - freeing up our call handlers to respond to the public.”

Members of the public are being encouraged to fill out a survey to help Wiltshire Police improve their call answering times. The Police Contact survey runs until midnight, Sunday 26 June.