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InQuire The University of Kent’s student newspaper
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3 June 2016
Issue 12.2
Contact editor@inquiremedia.co.uk for details
Prepare for your graduation
Kent summer events guide
Features Page 9
Entertainment Pages 12 and 13
Win a LoDo backpack RRP £74.99 Puzzles Page 11 Photo by Graham Richardson
Emergency services call outs dropped by 48 per cent over the past five years Ambulance visits have remained steady while figures show declining fire service and police call outs
Ruby Lyle Newspaper Editor
W
ith the introduction of the University’s new SafeZone app, InQuire chose to investigate how the crime levels have changed at the Canterbury campus over the past five years after submitting freedom of information (FoI) requests to the three emergency services. The statistics have been
largely positive, finding that Kent Police and Fire Rescue Service call outs have been steadily declining over the past five academic years. The year 2011/12 shows significantly higher figures for visits from these services. In that year, Kent Police visited 103 times. In contrast, from September 2015 to the end of March 2016, when FoI responses were received by InQuire, the police only came to
campus on 32 occassions. In total, emergency services came to the University almost twice as often in 2011/12 with 206 call outs to 2015/16’s 108 call outs. The South East Coast Ambulance Service has had a consistant number of visits to the Canterbury campus. In 2011/12, ambulances were called 78 times, in the 2015/16 data, they had already attended
73 times with three months of term left. Following these statistics, InQuire asked the University the following questions: “How does the University feel regarding its handling of crime on the University campus? “Why were there such high figures for emergency services call outs in 2011/12? “The call out figures for the police and fire brigade has
steadily declined over the last five academic years, but the call out figures for ambulances have remained consistently high. Why does the University believe this is, and what efforts are the University making, if any, to reduce this ambulance figure?” The University said they wished to comment after analysing the statistics and their implications. Continued on page 3