Humberside police ranked slowest in UK for answering 999 calls within two seconds

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Humberside Police said the data presented does not accurately reflect the call handling performance of 999 calls once these are passed to Humberside Police. Credit: Humberside Police

Humberside Police are the slowest in the country when it comes to answering 999 emergency calls, according to new data.

The Home Office statistics, which have been published for the first time today (31 May), showed that just 2% of its 999 calls were picked up within the 10 second target.

43 forces failed to meet it over the six months from November 2021 to April 2022.

Police in the North East and North Yorkshire among slowest to answer 999 calls

South Yorkshire Police answered 17%, Durham Police 41%, North Yorkshire 44% and Gloucestershire 49%.

Avon and Somerset Police was the only force to meet the standard.

Only one force has managed to hit the Government's target to respond to emergency calls

Humberside Deputy Chief Constable Paul Anderson said he welcomes any data that enables the public to see how their force is performing.

He said: "However, in this instance, the data presented does not accurately reflect the call handling performance of 999 calls once these are passed to Humberside Police.

"At present, despite representations, this data still includes the whole journey of a 999 call.

"This starts with a BT operator, and crucially, includes the time taken for them to divert the call to Humberside Police.

"The time this process takes varies significantly across the whole country, and in our region, there are delays of up to seven seconds for the call to be passed to Humberside Police and this delay is currently included in this data."

He added that the issue has been raised with the Home Office to understand why such delays happen adding that Humberside Police have just moved to a state-of-the at contact and control centre providing them with one of the UK's leading Police call centres.