POLICE forces and fire crews in Lancashire are responding better to emergencies than they were four years ago - but are still failing to meet tough performance targets.

Although the overall performance across the county has improved, targets for answering 999 calls and attending incidents are not being met by the two emergency services in the county, according to a report published by the Audit Commission.

The report, covering performance from 1998/9, found that Lancashire Police answered 93 per cent of 176,784 999 calls within 10 seconds, missing the target by seven per cent.

And 97 per cent of all immediate response incidents were attended within 15 minutes - the target was again 100 per cent.

The Fire Service met attendance targets on almost 97 per cent of fire call-outs. Their fire inspections, however, take about 20 days against a national average of 114 days. About £28 is spent on fire service provision per head of population.

According to the report there are 2.28 police officers up to and including the rank of inspector per thousand people, who spend 57 per cent of their time in public, and about £118 is spent on policing per head of the population. The report also shows that Lancashire police's target of answering all routine calls within 20 seconds is only achieved by 83 per cent.

And 81.72 per cent of correspondence is answered within 21 days. But the constabulary has the third highest rate of "incidents requiring immediate response", which include road traffic accidents and incidents where there is violence or a danger to life or the offender has been disturbed, at 80,663 within the English shire police authorities. Devon and Cornwall recorded 98,655 and Thames Valley recorded 86,467. The county managed to respond to 96.7 per cent of immediate response incidents within 15 minutes - the third best of the English shire authorities.

The report states that in Lancashire there are 82.9 crimes per 1,000 people, of which 8.6 are violent crimes, and 21.1 burglaries. There were also 5,982 road traffic accidents involving death and/or injury.

In 1998/9, the constabulary received 850 complaints - the third highest behind Sussex (1,164) and Avon and Somerset (852) of which 15 were substantiated and 289 were resolved informally.

Andrew Foster, controller of the Audit Commission, said: "The police and fire service provide vital services for the public - how they respond to emergencies is a fundamental part of their work. It is encouraging that forces and brigades are showing real improvements in this area.

"However, under best value police and fire authorities will be expected to deliver improvements year on year. Our performance indicators should help forces and brigades focus their efforts to improve and deliver a range of services to the standard that the public expect."

Commonest cause of a false alarm

FALSE alarms by faulty smoke detectors are most common at East Lancashire's hospitals, according to Lancashire fire service. In only nine weeks at the start of this year, fire crews were called 12 times to Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn, 11 times to Burnley General Hospital and six times to Blackburn Royal Infirmary.

Lancashire fire service press officer John Taylor said only Lancashire's universities were responsible for more false alarms in the county - crews were called 21 times to the University of Central Lancashire and 17 times to the University of Lancaster.

Lancashire fire fighters were called to 10,766 false alarms last year, more than any other shire county in Britain.

Mr Taylor said automatic fire alarms usually went off accidentally because of dust on the sensors, or because insects called thrips, a large type of dust mite, walked across the sensors.

He said: "Fire alarms need to be maintained properly. We will always go to an automatic fire alarm call out.

"But we can't be in two places at once and it might call us away from a life threatening situation."

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