POLICE in Hertfordshire have consistently failed to achieve their target for the number of 999-calls reached within 15 minutes.

A review of the force's performance in dealing with emergency calls was put before the Police Authority this month.

In only one month between April last year and February this year the force had met its target of reaching 90 per cent of immediate response calls within 15 minutes. Police had, on average, beaten the time limit 87 per cent of the time.

The force also missed its target for satisfactory behaviour of officers once they had reached emergency scenes. At one point, 28 per cent of respondants said they were not satisfied with officers' behaviour. The force only met its 85 per cent satisfactory level during two months of the year. People were happy with the level of service they received from operators answering 999 calls.

The targets are set jointly by Hertfordshire Constabulary and the Police Authority. The constabulary has set up a team to look into the problems and has made recommendations to the authority.

It concluded that work should be undertaken to assess if the 15 minutes target was realistic, and to find out why the motorway unit was significantly worse at meeting the target than other units.

County Councillor David Beatty, who is on the authority's performance review panel, said: 'It's a tough target but we think its realistic and we are not thinking of making changes to it.

'We believe that the police are prepared to continue to do all they can to reach it. There's no point in having targets that are easy to reach'

He added: 'There are the same targets for urban and rural areas - we don't make any allowance for rural areas as we expect them to receive the same level of service and response as the urban areas.'

The figures have surprised officers, who suggested they may have been let down by technology.

Superintendent Gary Kitching, of operational support, said: 'We think the 15 minutes response is an achievable target which we are missing by a relatively small number of calls.

'We really need to look into this and tighten up procedures. Some of the problem is due to technicalities like us receiving priority response calls which are the responsibility of neighbouring forces such as Thames Valley and the Metropolitan police. They are obviously passed on to the appropriate force but they will have already been logged as a priority and we won't make that target because we will never attend that event.

'In the case of the motorway unit, they are often the ones who ring in about incidents because they have come across them in the course of their duties. As they are on scene, we wouldn't need to send a crew but again the call has already been logged as a priority. We have to get the system to recognise these difficulties.'

He added: 'We also need to find the reason for such high levels of dissatisfaction. It seems rather odd that there is such a difference between people being happy when they first call the police to the point where police arrive.'