The vast majority of police forces in England have seen huge increases in the time it takes them to respond to burglaries, new data shows. It comes as Britain grapples with a general increase in crime and policing continues to feel the squeeze from 14 years of austerity.
Though the Government recently announced an injection of cash to the tune of almost £1billion, police chiefs warn that critical damage has already struck at the heart of their establishments.
Of the constabularies and police forces that responded to an FOI request, residents in Northamptonshire are worst placed, with authorities taking an average of 28 hours to respond to incidents.
The picture is entirely different in the neighbouring borough of Bedfordshire, however, where locals can expect police to respond to burglaries in just 14 minutes.
The request, put in by The Sun, saw 26 out of 39 police forces and constabularies reply. The overall picture is damning, with most performing worse in their response times compared to four years ago.
Law and order is shaping up to be an integral fixture in both upcoming local elections and the general election expected to come later this year.
While some forces are coping with incidents, others are seriously falling behind. London’s Met Police, for example, got to the scene in under 17 minutes. While this is speedy it’s still up from its previous 14-minute response time.
Greater Manchester Police, meanwhile, fell from 24 minutes to around 16.
Other forces have also managed to reduce their call-out time, like Cleveland Constabulary in Middlesborough. However, locals can still expect to wait just over an hour to see an officer.
The most shocking of all response time increases comes with South Yorkshire Police, whose figures have risen 443% since 2020. Back then, victims could expect police to arrive in two minutes. Now, they have to wait nearly 13 minutes.
It’s a far cry from further north in County Durham, however. Get robbed there and you’re looking at a 25-hour wait to see the old bill.
Recent Home Office figures revealed that three in four burglaries went unsolved in the year ending September 2023.
In a statement, the worst-ranked Northamptonshire Police said: “While some police forces only attend burglaries in progress, resulting in their overall response time being very low, Northamptonshire Police aims to attend every reported burglary, regardless of when it was reported.
“As a result, our average response time will naturally be much higher.”
