This year's ambitious police response time targets have had to be wound back because of increased pressure on staff and resources, says a ministerial briefing
Targets, or “output measures”, for issues such as the time taken for police to respond to traffic emergencies and burglaries have been dramatically reduced.
Police have twice as long to get to emergency events in urban areas: 45 minutes in town, and 60 minutes in rural areas. And they are required to respond to fewer burglaries within 48 hours.
In a briefing from police provided to the then Police Minister Stuart Nash, Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming said demands on the force had grown. READ MORE: * Tactical response model puts pressure on police staffing * Clock ticks for mental health response decision
“Police face immediate pressures to our service delivery goals, as calls for service from across our wider operating environment often exceed the capacity of those on-shift to immediately respond, due to attendance at other priority events.
“The past year has seen material changes in our operating environment. These changes, combined with an overall increase in demand for policing services, have impacted our ability to meet our performance standards.”
He asked for a range of targets to be amended before the Budget process, which were agreed to by Nash.
The time taken to attend emergency events in urban areas 90 percent of the time has been increased to less than 45 minutes. Last year’s target of 20-25 minutes was not met, with the urban response time being 36 minutes.
For rural events, that measure was increased to less than 60 minutes, from 45 minutes last year.
"The historic approach to police resourcing is based on a traditional model of policing where the delivery of services is performed by front-line constables; a view that is increasingly out of step with the realities of demand." – Jevon McSkimming
However, police said though there were issues with emergency response times – including increased demand, more cars on the road and urban sprawl, which made it slower to get to places – the official figures were not an accurate reflection of what happened on the ground.
The standard for burglary response times has also been reduced.
Last year’s standard was that 98 percent of burglaries would be attended by police within 48 hours, this year that has been reduced to “greater than 85 percent”, with police dubbing the previous standard “aspirational”.
Last year police responded to 83 percent of burglaries within 48 hours.
The target for updating people on the status of their case within 21 days has also been reduced to 70 percent from 90 percent.
Last year two-thirds of people were updated on their cases within that timeframe.
And targets for answering non-emergency calls were also slashed with the aim now to answer between 750,000 and a million compared with a target of answering 1.65m-1.85m.
Last year 743,319 non-emergency calls were answered.
The targets are used to report against for Budget purposes and in the year to June Annual Report.
The new targets will be included in the 2022/2023 reporting period.
Police have been warning demand is outstripping their resources with increased mental health and family violence callouts, alongside emerging crimes such as cyber taking up more time as well as easier and more ways to report crime.
The new 105 reporting line and online reporting had led to an extra 175,000 incidents each year and family harm callouts were time-consuming – taking about five times longer to resolve than other callouts.
A separate briefing to Nash in February detailed this pressure, with McSkimming saying bluntly “there are limits on what police can achieve”.
"Police is under continuous pressure to meet growing and changing service demands. We are expected to deliver core services well while venturing into an ever-widening range of new activities which the traditional policing model is not designed to serve,” he said.
"The historic approach to police resourcing is based on a traditional model of policing where the delivery of services is performed by front-line constables; a view that is increasingly out of step with the realities of demand.
"Increasingly the complex nature of police business is not fully served by the traditional omni-competent constable – but rather a broad range of specialised functions which may or may not require constabulary powers or training, many of which call for specific expertise."
The briefing made clear some of the “new activities” police had been expected to manage could be better looked after by other government agencies, but the details were redacted under the Official Information Act.
Police said the revising of year-end targets did not mean standards were slipping, but that they were being reviewed in light of the current operating environment.
McSkimming said the outputs were reviewed every year.
"As part of our annual audit process, our external auditor, Ernst &Young recommended changes in order to make sure these measures are fit-for-purpose. Updating our output standards is a reflection that the environment police operate in has changed.
"The past 10 years have seen significant additional demand on police services, most notably a doubling of family harm and mental health incidents."
