The Policing Pledge, which was introduced across all police forces in England and Wales at the end of 2008, sets out the minimum standards of service that the public can expect to receive from the police including for response times. Through the pledge, the police have committed to aim to answer 999 calls within 10 seconds, deploying to emergencies immediately, giving an estimated time of arrival and reaching the incident as safely and as quickly as possible. In urban areas, they aim to arrive within 15 minutes and in rural areas within 20 minutes.
The Home Office does not collect data centrally on average response times. However in October 2009, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary published a report on the standard of pledge delivery across all police forces. The report notes that on responding to emergency calls, 17 forces were graded ‘good’, 25 were ‘fair’ and one force was ‘poor’.
It is for individual police forces and authorities to ensure delivery of the policing pledge in their area. The Government will hold forces to account for progress through the single top-down target we have set them to improve public confidence that crime and antisocial behaviour are being tackled locally, and in the light of inspection work by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Latest British Crime Survey (BCS) figures released in January 2010 show an improving trend, that, nationally, 50 per cent. of the public now agree that the police and local councils are dealing with the antisocial behaviour and crime issues that matter locally.