Thames Valley Police (TVP) is ranked in the bottom half of a new league table showing how quickly the country’s police forces answer 999 calls and has routinely missed a key official target.
The latest available data shows that for the month of August, TVP took an average of 14.4 seconds to pick up emergency calls, placing it 24th out of 44 forces providing data.
The target for police forces across the country is to answer 90% of 999 calls in under 10 seconds. This figure has never been achieved by TVP in 2022, dropping as low as 72.2% in July.
Avon and Somerset Constabulary were the fastest in August, answering emergency calls in an average of 8.1 seconds, however no police force answered 90% of calls in under 10 seconds in August.
Gloucestershire Constabulary were the slowest responders, taking almost 38 seconds on average to answer 999 calls.
[TABLE: Emergency call data for August 2022]
Chief Superintendent Simon Dodds, Head of Contact Management for Thames Valley Police, told Bucks Radio: "Like most Forces, during the summer months, we experience a significant increase in calls to 999.
"In August the number of calls answered was over 32,000, with 95% of those calls being answered in under a minute.
"Our highly trained and experienced teams answer emergency 999 calls as quickly as possible, and this service is constantly monitored to make sure we are always responding where the is the greatest need.
"We do still get significant amounts of calls to 999 that are not an emergency, and every time this happens someone at risk has to wait longer.
"We closely monitor our performance, and we will always prioritise answering our 999 calls.
"With such high volumes of calls, it is crucial that 999 is only used when there is immediate threat to life, property, or where a crime is in progress.
"The public can help us by remembering to contact in other ways if it's not an emergency. Options include reporting a crime or telling us about something on our website. These online reports come through to the same highly trained Contact Management Staff who answer 999 and 101 calls but reporting online enables us to deal with emergencies first."
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