THE length of time people are left on hold after ringing the Sussex Police 101 non-emergency number has gone down – but is still more than seven minutes.

At a performance and accountability meeting, Deputy Chief Constable Jo Shiner said the average hold time in September was seven minutes, 31 seconds – a big drop from the 17 minutes 57 seconds the year before.

In October, the average was seven minutes, 48 seconds, compared with 20 minutes, 23 seconds the year before.

This was welcome news to Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne, who for months has fielded frustrated questions from the public and councillors over the state of the service.

DCC Shiner praised the work of her team to get the figures down, adding that the number of people abandoning their calls had also fallen.

In September, 22.5 per cent hung up, compared with 48 per cent the year before, while in October, 22.4 per cent gave up, compared with 50.7 per cent the year before.

DCC Shiner said some of those people went on to use the online reporting service.

Looking at the total number of 101 calls answered, she said the figures were up by 6,500 and 7,500 in September and October respectively – a total of 217 and 242 calls each day.

When it came to the volume of online reporting, Sussex was third in the country behind the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police.