The demand on our police

So as we come to the end of our summer with the official start of autumn next week so Wiltshire Police ends its Summer Demand campaign.

 The campaign, which was run primarily on social media, ran through July, August and some of September to help reduce the demand on our local policing teams during the busy summer period; promoting conversation with our communities about how they can best help the police over the summer months.
It focused on a number of issues including domestic abuse, drink driving, theft, anti-social behaviour and crime prevention. 

The last strand was the "Who you gonna call" campaign which guided people to call the police via 101 or 999 for the right reasons.

This was a good way of highlighting some of the inappropriate calls the Force receives so that the public may reconsider picking up the phone to call for an issue which could be better dealt with by one of our partner agencies or via our website.

Our 101 or 999 system is always there for anyone who may unfortunately find themselves in an emergency, and people are never deterred from contacting the police.  And we are getting better at responding to calls.

Over the last 12 months the call handling of non-emergency calls has been consistently good with the average time to get through standing at 1 minute and 4 seconds.  In the same period the number of callers who have hung up whilst waiting has reduced from over 22 per cent to under 5 per cent now.

However, an inappropriate call could mean somebody with a genuine emergency is kept waiting and lives could be lost.

There are many hidden demands on modern day policing and with the summer being a particularly busy time for all emergency services, it was a great time to continue the conversation with the public about the challenges the police face.

The officers and staff I work with are committed to fighting crime and protecting the public but we all need to do our bit about thinking whether or not I need to make that 999 or 101 call, also we need continued help and assistance of our partners to help tackle the ever-growing demand on our Force.