Essex Police's rapid response times in Chelmsford and Maldon are being held back due to a lack of qualified drivers able to drive with blue lights, the chief inspector for Chelmsford has said.

In the latest figures supplied by Essex Police, 74.6 per cent of emergency responses met the target time of 15 minutes for an urban emergency and 20 minutes for a rural emergency – a 2.6 per cent improvement year on year.

But that is set to increase further once more officers are trained given that only 28.5 per cent of officers covering Chelmsford and the Maldon district are trained to drive in response conditions, when ideally 50 per cent of the team should be qualified.

Speaking in Chelmsford City Council's overview and scrutiny committee on Monday (February 7), Chief Inspector Stephen Scott-Haynes, district commander for Chelmsford and Maldon said: "The aim is keep for us to keep improving the response times. My local policing team who do the 24/7 responses are very young in service.

"So 40 per cent of that team have under three years service which means that I don't have number of response drivers I would like which will effect response times.

"In a perfect profile I would have 50 per cent of that team driving at response conditions. At the moment we are at 28.5 per cent.

"There has been a real push from the police fire and crime commissioner and chief to get more training. I am getting that training pushed through to us.

"It used to be training was split evenly across three police areas, north south and west. We are the biggest so we should get the most. So the aim is we will get more courses.

"My aim is to improve response times. I just need to get the drivers It takes three weeks each to get to response conditions."

Chief Insp Scott-Haynes told the committee how, in Chelmsford, crime is up 2.2 per cent with 324 more offences in the rolling 12 months to December 2021, a similar trend across Essex (2.8 is the force figure).

Anti social behaviour is down by 27.2 per cent with 1,378 few incidents.

He said areas of concern include sex offences up 28.9 per cent, hate crime up 29.7 per cent high risk domestic abuse up 33.5 per cent and violence against the person up eight per cent.