Wiltshire Police’s wait times for 101 calls down by over 66%
Wait times reached a high of 37 seconds last June
The amount of time Wiltshire Police take to answer a 101 call has dropped by over two thirds over the last year.
Latest figures from Police.uk reveal that while it took an average of 16 seconds to get through to the force in April 2024, it only took five seconds in March 2025.
Wiltshire Police have been working to improve their response times for the past two years.
Chief Inspector Allen Lumley, who is in charge of Wiltshire Police’s control room, said: "We want to make sure that we provide a sustained focus on putting the caller at the heart of what we do – staying empathetic to each and every caller, despite around 10,000 101 calls and 8,000 999 calls for service every single month.
"It has taken a long time to turn around our performance because of the time it takes to embed these things and start to bear the fruit of our hard graft.”
To achieve this decrease in wait times, the force has introduced a number of measures such as increased recruitment with better training for new starters, a more dynamic operating model and improved situational awareness through wall boards which allow staff to recognise if they are struggling to keep up with demand and help out where needed.
Wiltshire Police has also increased performance oversight and scrutiny, meaning that its performance is reviewed on a daily basis to ensure that issues are fixed as early as possible.
“Then we look further ahead”, Chief Inspector Lumley told Greatest Hits Radio.
“So, we're always looking at three to four weeks ahead at staffing levels. Sometimes we look up to three months ahead to really look and see if there's any pinch points that we can try to mitigate and any issues that might be coming our way.
“That scrutiny is maintained throughout various levels in the organisation, right up to the Chief Constable and the PCC. Quite often the PCC will walk into the control room and ask me, how our performance is.
“So, there's a lot of pressure but an appropriate amount of pressure on us to make sure we're delivering a good service to the public.”
The force has also made improvements to its 999 call wait times.
Over the last six months, Wiltshire Police have continuously been hitting or getting close to the national target of answering 90% of calls in under 10 seconds.