MORE than 8,000 emergency 999 calls to Gwent Police have taken more than a minute to answer since the start of last year, according to Home Office statistics.

Police forces are expected to answer 90 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds, but Gwent Police managed just 75 per cent in that time and 6.7 per cent of calls took more  60 seconds. 

A spokesperson for Gwent Police said the force's own data differs from the Home Office figures and shows that calls are handled more quickly.

Superintendent Martyn Smith of Gwent Police said: "While the national reporting for 999 calls is based on performance data provided by BT, our own performance data will differ from these figures.

"The BT system relies on a BT operator manually confirming that the police service has taken the call, which means all calls will have an additional few seconds compared to our data."

On the broader issue of response times, Superintendent Smith said: “These figures do show us that we answer more than 75 per cent of our emergency calls within 10 seconds and our median wait time for 999 emergency calls is a little over five seconds.” 

The Home Office figures show that Gwent Police is slower to pick up 999 calls than North Wales Police, which is the closest comparison for another Welsh force.  

The Home Office statistics for January 2022 to May 2023 - the most recent available - recorded 128,871 999 calls received by Gwent compared to North Wales Police’s 150,502.  

Despite taking fewer calls, Gwent's response speed was slower, with 6.7 per cent of Gwent calls taking more than 60 seconds to answer compared to just 1.03 per cent in North Wales.

South Wales Argus: The number of 999 calls received by Gwent Police and how many took more than a minute to answer, from January 2022 to May 2023.The number of 999 calls received by Gwent Police and how many took more than a minute to answer, from January 2022 to May 2023. (Image: Source: Police.UK 999 Performance Data for Metropolitan Police Service)

The data gathered by the Home Office is intended to enable the public and police and crime commissioners to measure the effectiveness of their local force.   

The figures on 999 call response times were first published in May last year. At the time, Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner Jeff Cuthbert, speaking in his role as a local policing lead on the Association of Police and Crime Comissioners talked about the importance of making the information public.

"The public quite rightly expect the police to respond to 999 calls in good time," he said.

"So police and crime commissioners will be using this data to get a grip on performance across our local forces, hold our chief constables to account and ensure members of the public are receiving an efficient and effective response when they report to 999.”