Wiltshire Police take 12 seconds to accept 999 call

Wiltshire Police take on average 12 seconds to answer a 999 call, only five seconds slower than the fastest police force in the country.

In January, an improvement plan was made to help the force get quicker at picking up calls after more than 20% of emergency calls to the force were not answered in under the target 10 seconds.

Wiltshire Police was recently taken out of special measures after inspectors found that it had made "significant improvement".

Data from a performance report shows that the force received over 123,920 emergency 999 calls in the year up to April 2024.

Lincolnshire Police were the fastest force to pick up an emergency 999 call but Wiltshire Police but is significantly faster than the slowest UK force, Bedfordshire Police, which takes 30 seconds, reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Wiltshire Police’s abandonment rate, the cases in which the caller disconnects before their call is answered, was at 1.7% for the same year.

Meanwhile, the immediate response time was 13 minutes, 11 seconds, and the average time the police spent at the scene was two hours, seven minutes and 59 seconds.

Wiltshire Police was placed in special measures two years prior after it was found to be failing in several areas.

This included “ineffective” management and a failure to “understand and promptly identify the vulnerability of victims at the first point of contact.”

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