Yahoo News Police can take days to respond to emergency 999 calls, watchdog finds
Police are taking days to respond to 999 calls, despite telling victims they will be there within the hour, a report has found.
Thousands of victims of serious crimes, including violence, burglary and sexual offences, are being forced to wait in queues, until officers are dispatched to deal with their case.
In some instances it can take officers several days to turn up to see the victim, despite their calls being classed as requiring a "prompt" response.
Around a quarter of all forces in England and Wales were identified as having problems in responding to emergency calls, something inspectors warned was "putting vulnerable people at serious risk of harm".
In an annual review of police performance, conducted by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Rescue Services (HMICFRS), inspectors acknowledged that the system was under "severe strain" and "cracks were beginning to show".
But the watchdog warned that some constabularies - including some of the country's largest forces - had to act urgently to ensure that victims of crime received a better service.
HM Inspector, Zoe Billingham said: "In the face of increasing pressures, dramatic increases in demand and rising number of complex crimes, like sexual abuse, child abuse and domestic abuse, most forces continue to do a good job in keeping us safe.
"But I have major concerns that policing is under significant stress. On occasions that stress stretches some forces to such an extent that they risk being unable to keep people safe in some very important areas of policing."
She went on: "We are concerned that in a minority of forces, the service is overwhelmed in some aspects of policing. In these forces vulnerable victims are all too often not getting a timely police response, as their calls to the police have not been allocated for officers to respond.
"This is because in some forces there are so many calls that staff have not been able to allocate them quickly or there are not enough response officers to send to incidents."
She added: "Almost a quarter of forces are not meeting enough of their demand in as timely way as we would expect, or are managing demand inappropriately. In some case these practices are putting vulnerable people at serious risk of harm."
Ms Billingham said while that no longer seemed to be the case, it was now clear that many forces were struggling to cope with demand.
She said: "HMICFRS is concerned by this finding because it shows that the system is under severe strain and in some forces the cracks are showing."
The report identified problems with response times for both West Midlands Police and Greater Manchester Police, meaning vulnerable victims of crime often did not receive the service they needed in those areas.
In Cambridgeshire during one month, inspectors found that the average response time for 999 calls, categorised as requiring a one hour response, was actually 15 hours.
In four other areas - Staffordshire, Warwickshire, South Yorkshire and West Mercia - it was found that officers were not responding to emergencies immediately, and were not considering the needs of the victims during the subsequent delay.
The report also acknowledged that in cases of dire emergency, where lives were at risk, or a crime was actually in progress, response times were generally good, with officers getting to the scene quickly.
Responding to the findings, Greater Manchester Police's Deputy Chief Constable, Ian Pilling, said the force had lost 2,000 officers and still received more than 3,000 calls a day for assistance.
He said: “Managing this demand with reduced resources is extremely difficult and it is a challenge every day to allocate resources to incidents. Unfortunately, as the report highlights, this means that we sometimes don’t deal with incidents as quickly as we would like to."
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said it was acting on the HMICFRS findings in order to improve response times.
