Whanganui police are coming in outside the target times in responding to priority one emergency callouts, but not by much.
Figures released to the Chronicle show, within the year to 31 December 2011, a total of 1786 priority one events were responded to by Wanganui officers.
Priority one events include actual threats to life or property in progress, violence when used or threatened, serious offences or incidents in progress where offenders are present or leaving the scene, and serious vehicle crashes with people trapped.
Police try to be at the scene within 10 minutes.
Of the priority one callouts in 2011, 1426, or about 80 per cent, met with a response within the 10-minute target time, but 360 events were outside that time, resulting in a response time of 14 minutes 44sec for 90 per cent of events responded to.
Police use the time within which 90 per cent of priority one events are responded to rather than an average time. The 90 per cent relates to the time within which nine out of 10 priority one events receive a response.
Officers don't need to report factors which impede response time, therefore the reasons why priority one events have exceeded their response time-frames are not held.
Statistics on the total number of 111 calls from the Wanganui area are not kept, because calls are answered by Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch call centres and the physical location of the phone the call is being made from is often not known.
Whanganui Police area commander inspector Sue Schwalger said police strove to achieve the time targets as part of providing a high level of service, as the police and community expected.
The 12-minute average delay in meeting the average rural target time was probably due to factors such as the ability of units to respond, their location at the time of call, the distance required to travel and time of the incident.
For rural and urban callouts, Ms Schwalger said police would continue to respond in a timely and safe manner to each critical incident.
"I would like to emphasise the safety message that, whilst police will respond in a timely manner, speeds must be safe for both the officers responding and the community."
Measures in place to ensure officers could respond to events in a timely fashion included initiatives such as the implementation of smart devices for issuing infringement notices and the establishment of file management centres to halve paperwork and free up constables to be out preventing crime and responding to events.
The introduction of Neighbourhood Policing Teams such as that established in Gonville got to the heart of the problems by concentrating on the drivers of crime, Ms Schwalger said.
Police were committed to their new operating strategy of "prevention first", which concentrated efforts on prevention rather than reaction: "We hope that there will be a continued reduction in crime, which will alleviate the need to respond as often to such incidents."