A new national study has revealed Dorset Police are the slowest in the country at answering emergency calls.
Research conducted by people search engine, Radaris, analyses the most recent data from the month of October to determine how long UK police forces take to answer emergency phone calls.
Gwent Police is the quickest, answering 90.6% of calls in under 10 seoncds, compared with Dorset which answered 70.20 per cent in less than 10 seconds.
Dorset Police responded saying they had reduced staffing levels at the time of the survey due to training and staff sickness, but their own internal data shows them as generally being much quicker.
The force told Alfred in Shaftesbury: “During the months of October and November, Dorset Police had reduced staffing levels due to training and staff sickness, which resulted in the force taking a few seconds longer, on average to answer calls.
“Unfortunately, we were unable to meet the target of answering calls within 10 seconds. During October, the national data indicates that Dorset Police answered 999 calls, on average within 16.15 seconds and 10.8 seconds in November.
“However, as with other police forces nationally, internal data, which records the time that the emergency call is made available to Dorset Police indicates that the average call answer time was 11.6 seconds and 9.22 seconds for each month respectively.
“Despite these challenging months, I am pleased to see the national data indicates that the force has reduced the amount of time it takes to answer emergency calls. BT data indicates that Dorset Police answered 999 calls, on average, in 12.62 seconds between the period of 1 January 2023 to 30 November 2023.
“During this same date range other forces answered calls on average between 7.29 and 35.21 seconds. This is an improvement from the previous year where BT data indicates that Dorset Police answered emergency calls, on average after 17.87 seconds.
“We continue to appeal to the public to prevent accidental calls to 999. Last year we processed 27,500 accidental calls which takes up valuable time for our contact officers and prevents them from supporting genuine emergencies.
“Dorset Police is committed to providing an excellent service to victims of crime and has ambitious plans to make significant investments in our public contact systems, with a commitment to reduce call times.
“I would like to reassure members of the public that genuine emergency calls will receive a prompt response from the police.”
Police and Crime Commissioner David Sidwick added: “I continue to hold the Chief Constable to account for Dorset Police’s response to both emergency and non-emergency calls, and I am pleased to see the constant effort to improve. For example, over the highest period of demand last summer, the time taken to respond to calls was improved compared to the same period in the previous year. I am also sure that Dorset residents will understand that the time taken to answer calls is not the only important measure and will be interested that in recent months Dorset Police has improved its deployment processes which have brought about a 10% improvement in emergency attendance times.”
A spokesperson for Radaris has commented on the study findings: “Police revealed that crime had increased by 11% in the year ending December 2022 compared with the year ending December 2021.
“This year-on-year increase highlights a strong correlation between the rise in crime rates and its association with Christmas.”