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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS BY DEPUTY S.S.P.A. POWER OF ST. BRELADE
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 15th JULY 2013
Question
Would the Minister indicate to the Assembly the estimated and proposed dispatch times for police vehicles responding to an emergency to most points on the Island from the proposed Green Street Police Headquarters location and can he compare those dispatch times to the seven minute average dispatch time of police vehicles attributed to most parts of the Island from the present location at Rouge Bouillon?
Would the Minister confirm whether there will be any calculated difference? Answer
Despite the best efforts of the States of Jersey Police and me, there has continued to be public misunderstanding of the way in which the States of Jersey Police respond to emergencies and I am grateful to Deputy Power for the opportunity to correct this misunderstanding.
There are no estimated or proposed despatch times for police vehicles responding to an emergency from the proposed Green Street Car Park Police Headquarters because the vast majority of emergency calls are responded to by police vehicles which are out patrolling the Island. About two vehicles per week leave Police Headquarters in order to respond directly to incidents occurring somewhere else in Jersey. However, most of these deployments are not emergency deployments but are specialist departments, such as Crime Scene Investigation, Police Dogs etc. who are responding in support of officers who have already deployed from locations elsewhere in the Island.
The target response time to incidents within the town area is 6 minutes and to incidents outside St Helier is 10 minutes. 90% of emergency responses (Code 1) are achieved within the above target response times.
Average response times from Police Headquarters are not recorded for the reasons set out above.
On the unusual occasions where an emergency response might be made directly from the new Police Headquarters, the estimation of the States of Jersey Police is that eastbound responses would be about 1 minute faster than westbound responses.
My own view, based upon my experience of the roads in Jersey, is that if a comparison were to be made between the current position of Police Headquarters and the future position, then the following would apply in the unusual cases in which an emergency deployment were to be made from Police Headquarters: -
- deployment to the south-east and east of the Island would be faster;
- deployment to the north-east, south, south-west and west of the Island would be about the same; and
- deployment to the north-west and north of the Island would be slower.
Overall, bearing in mind the normal pattern of deployments from mobile units, neither the States of Jersey Police nor I believe that the proposed relocation will make any difference to the average response times.