Police call-out times for burglaries soar by quarter – where does your area rank in our interactive map?
BURGLARY victims are having to wait more than a day for cops to show up, figures have revealed.
The average time for police officers to attend break-in crime scenes has increased 30 per cent in just a year in one part of England.
Northamptonshire residents have seen the average response time rise from 21 hours and 34 minutes to 28 hours, a Lib Dem probe found.
The data was uncovered through Freedom of Information requests to all police forces, with 26 out of 39 providing responses.
Analysis showed across England victims were left waiting an average of nine hours and eight minutes in 2022/23.
That compares to seven hours and 17 minutes the year before, meaning there has been a 25 per cent spike.
Tory MP Marco Longhi, who sits on the influential Home Affairs select committee, said cops need to up their game and tackle all crime quickly.
He said: “I am a big supporter of a ‘broken windows’ approach to tackling crime.
“This means tackling all crime, quickly, however ‘petty’ or ‘low level’ the police may choose to describe it, as it has been shown that these crimes often lead to more serious ones being committed.
“More fundamentally, victims of ‘low level’ crime do not see it as ‘low level’ at all.
“These crimes can have lasting impacts and all victims deserve support and redress.
“If this happened, then the police would return to having the levels of trust and confidence it once had.”
The figures come as polling reveals 71 per cent of people believe the Government is handling the issue of crime badly.
Only 18 per cent say ministers are coping with the issue well, according to a YouGov tracking poll.
‘Postcode lottery’
Law and order will become a hot topic in the upcoming local elections and into the general election campaign expected later this year.
Response figures supplied to The Sun showed a “postcode lottery” across the country.
Some forces, such as Bedfordshire, are managing to get a bobby on the scene in just under 15 minutes.
Met Police got there in just under 17 minutes, up from 14 minutes, while Greater Manchester Police’s response time to burglary fell from 24 minutes to around 16.
In South Yorkshire, figures have risen 443 per cent from 2020 to 2023, from two minutes 20 to nearly 13 minutes.
The Lib Dems said some forces further split up their data depending on the priority ranking of burglary.
But in these cases, the party said it found an average between all the categories provided.
The fact traumatised burglary victims are being left waiting for hours, wondering if the police will arrive, is unacceptable
Alistair Carmichael
After Northamptonshire, Durham Constabulary left residents waiting the second longest, with an average of nearly 26 hours.
It comes just months after the latest Home Office figures revealed three in four burglaries went unsolved in the year ending September 2023.
Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael slammed the Tories for years of “ineffective resourcing of local police forces”.
He added: “The fact traumatised burglary victims are being left waiting for hours, wondering if the police will arrive, is unacceptable.
“To think that crucial evidence may be lost in the process too is unforgivable. The British public deserves so much better.”
In the past, police have been hammered for not bothering to attend some burglaries at all.
In October 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council announced an agreement that forces would begin going to every reported offence. In June 2023, it confirmed the new pledge was being met.
Most forces aim to respond to burglaries, which are often considered as Grade 2 priority incidents, within one hour.
The College of Policing defines these as “incidents where a witness or other evidence is likely to be lost”, and “a degree of urgency is still associated with immediate police action”.
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.”
The Home Office said: “Since 2010, our communities are safer, with neighbourhood crimes such as burglary and robbery down 48 per cent. We also have more police officers protecting the public, having delivered on our promise to recruit 20,000 additional officers.”
Deputy Chief Constable Alex Franklin-Smith, the NPCC’s lead for burglary, said: “Not every burglary report is the same and police control rooms across England must assess the threat, harm and risk associated with every call to ensure attendance is effectively prioritised.”
POLICE FAIL CO-OP
BOSSES at the Co-op say police rarely turn up to its shops even when offenders have been caught and detained by staff.
Its food stores suffered their highest level of retail crime last year with 336,170 incidents of shoplifting and anti-social behaviour — 44 per cent more than the year before.
But the retailer said that in 79 per cent of cases officers did not attend.
Boss Matt Hood said it worked out at an average of 1,000 incidents and four workers attacked daily — while the cost was about £70million.