Closing the response gap

At the end of January, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced what she described as “the largest reforms to policing since the police service was founded two centuries ago”. Central to the reforms is a new national framework for response times: police officers are expected to arrive within 15 minutes in urban areas and 20 minutes in rural settings for the most serious incidents, while 999 calls should be answered within ten seconds.

The intention is clear. Faster, more consistent responses are essential to restoring public confidence and ensuring people receive help when they need it most. But in many conversations I have had with business leaders in the aftermath of this announcement, the same question has arisen: how will these standards be met in an environment where police forces are already operating under unprecedented strain?

That question matters not only for policing, but for businesses and individuals across the UK who are increasingly exposed to crime, disruption, and uncertainty about when help will arrive.

Growing gaps

Police forces today face a difficult balancing act. Demand continues to rise, incidents are evermore complex, and resources are finite. As a result, forces must make tough choices about how they prioritise their response, particularly outside major cities where geography alone can make rapid attendance challenging. National standards may improve transparency and accountability, but they do not change the underlying reality that the police cannot be everywhere, all the time.

For businesses, the implications are significant. In the retail sector alone, the British Retail Consortium estimates that theft cost UK retailers more than £2.2 billion in 2024, with a further £1.8 billion spent on preventative measures. Despite this investment, both opportunistic and organised crime continue to rise, while police response times can be uncertain. Traditional, reactive approaches to security are no longer sufficient on their own.

This is the gap that tech-enabled response models are increasingly filling.

Tech solutions

Given the increasingly complex risk landscape, businesses and individuals are turning to systems that combine technology, intelligence, and human intervention to deliver faster, more effective support. The aim is not to replace the emergency services, but to ensure incidents are assessed quickly, verified accurately, and acted upon decisively in the critical early stages.

Platforms such as AURA enable individuals or businesses facing an incident to raise the alarm instantly, with AURA’s algorithms allowing incidents to be routed to the nearest available accredited responder. That means faster on-scene presence, earlier intervention, and, when appropriate, escalation to the emergency services.

My experience at AURA has shown me how important early intervention is. In many situations, a rapid response can deter further criminal activity, prevent escalation, and protect vulnerable individuals. As many police forces now do not attend to unverified alarms, having accurate, real-time intelligence from the scene can support a more effective response even when police attendance is ultimately required.

Decisive impacts

The impact of this approach is not theoretical. AURA recently worked with a high street food retailer that had been repeatedly targeted by an organised crime gang using the same method of entry across multiple sites. The damage caused was so severe that affected stores were forced to close, meaning they were faced with both steep repair costs and lost revenue.

Within 24 hours, AURA mobilised a coordinated response across 80 sites spanning a 380-square-mile area. By connecting site alarms and callouts directly to the nearest vetted responders, incidents could be verified in real time and escalated to the police with clear, actionable intelligence. Over a six-week period, 27 callouts were completed with an average response time of under 22 minutes, including multiple attendances in under five minutes. Three suspected gang members were arrested, and there have been no attempted break-ins since.

This outcome was not delivered by technology alone. It was the combination of smart systems, real-time intelligence, and well-trained responders working within a coordinated network. For the retailer, it meant restored confidence, reduced disruption, and the ability to keep trading.

I have also seen first-hand how technology can drastically bring down response times, which the Home Secretary has made a key priority. Indeed, AURA recently worked with a nationwide security company and helped them consistently achieve sub-40-minute response times across 340 UK buildings, thereby avoiding over £300k in SLA penalties.

By integrating AURA’s technology into their existing alarm-monitoring platforms, this enabled the company’s controllers to dispatch to AURA in seconds. On average, vetted responders arrived on site in just over 28 minutes, significantly below the target time. We should be thinking carefully about how such technology can be deployed to reduce response times across the security ecosystem.

Evolving roles

As the Home Office reforms make clear, the role of policing is evolving. In my opinion, it is not realistic for businesses or individuals to expect public forces to shoulder the entire burden of prevention and response in an increasingly complex risk landscape. Instead, technology-enabled security has a vital supporting role to play.

By embracing systems that offer instant alerts, live tracking, rapid dispatch, and on-site verification – supported by accredited responders and professional control rooms – businesses and individuals can access faster support, reduce risk, and improve outcomes when it matters most.

Backed up by dedicated security professionals on the ground, often putting themselves in harm’s way, innovations across the security ecosystem – including in biometric security, IoT sensors, and AI-driven predictive analytics – are demonstrating how tech can materially improve safety and emergency response.

The ambition behind the Government’s new response standards is the right one. Achieving it will require not only reform within policing, but a broader recognition that resilience today is built through collaboration, technology, and innovation.

Alex Booth is Managing Director at AURA UK.