Police losing vital ‘golden hour’ as response times to 999 calls soar

VICTIMS of crime are having to wait up to 30 minutes for police to attend 999 calls as response times have doubled in some forces, figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal.

Police admit that the delays reduce the opportunity to solve crimes such as burglaries and robberies and give criminals a better chance to escape.

In some cases, members of the public have been told to let criminals go because of the delays, while one force had to suspend 101 non-emergency calls last year to cope with 999 calls.

Simon Cole, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on local policing,

‘When you get there, there’s more of a risk that evidence has been lost or offenders have made off ’

said that with rising crime, an increasing population and 22,000 fewer officers since 2010, forces had to prioritise and “something has to give, like slower response times to incidents”.

“That’s important in the context of the concept of the golden hour, the idea that what you do early on really matters,” he said.

“When you get there, there’s more of a risk that evidence has been lost or offenders have made off so there’s an increase in risk in the time delay.”

Every one of the 27 police forces that responded to a Freedom of Information request reported an increase in times since 2010, with six admitting they missed all their own targets.

Greater Manchester Police has seen response times for calls requiring an immediate response increase from 6 minutes 17 seconds in 2011-12 to 12 minutes 3seconds in 2017/18. Despite West Midlands Police having a 15-minute target for immediate calls, the average response time has risen from 10 minutes 59 seconds in 2015, to 23 minutes 12 seconds in 2018.

Louisa Rolfe, the Dept Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, admitted in October that some members of the public had been told to free criminals they had caught because no officers were available to attend.

Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, South Wales and Merseyside police forces have also seen response times rise above their own targets for immediate priority calls. Average response times stand at over 21, 20, 18, 15 and 11 minutes respectively. This is despite these forces having target response times of 10, 15, or, in the case of rural Lincolnshire, 20 minutes.

Bedfordshire has the slowest response of 33 minutes, a 37 per cent rise from 24 minutes in 2015, although the force said its system of assessing calls as requiring either a “fast” on-the-day response or a “fixed” appointment was not fully comparable with other forces. It has had to suspend its 101 line a number of times due to a spike in 999 calls.

In Northumbria, the proportion of 999 responses answered within its 10-minute target decreased from 95.2 per cent in 2012 to 78.7 per cent in 2015.

Cleveland dropped from 89.5 per cent in 2012 to 78.9 per cent in 2018. West Yorkshire responded to 81.5 per cent of “immediate” calls within 15 minutes in the first six months of 2018, down from 93.1 per cent in 2012.

Hampshire Police responded to 71 per cent of “immediate” priority calls within its 15-minute target in 2018, down from 88.8 per cent in 2010.

The number of 999 calls received by the 25 police forces to give full data increased from 4.6 million in 2013 to 5.3million in 2017, a rise of 13.1 per cent.