Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner Chris Nelson has pledged to slash "unacceptable" police response times for a Cotswold town.

Prompted by public fears over delay times in emergency response to incidents at Wotton-under-Edge, Cotswold MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown has held a meeting with the town's mayor, Martin Tucker, and a resident who raised the concern. 

Mr Tucker said he would work with Rod Hansen, the Chief Constable, to see how times can be cut.

Close to the border with South Gloucestershire, Wotton-under-Edge's own police station was among 18 satellite operations that were closed by government cuts in 2011. Since then, the town has relied upon fast response from Dursley (6.5 miles away) and Stroud (12.8 miles). 

The police target for response is 15 minutes, but calls to the town are recorded as averaging 24 minutes, while a recent investigation into police waiting times by the Liberal Democrats found Gloucestershire Constabulary is taking on average 18.5 hours to respond to non-emergency calls.

Sir Geoffrey said: "The current police waiting times for Wotton-under-Edge are completely unacceptable, but we had a productive meeting and I thank everyone for their work on improving this situation."

Mr Nelson agreed that Wotton's category one 999 response data was "not acceptable" and also noted that for category two calls, which are not categorised as emergencies, the average wait for the town is four hours - twice the average across the county.

Chief constable Rod Hansen has also outlined how an "enhanced police operational model" is now in place. This should improve policing throughout the whole of Gloucestershire by anticipating demand and reducing excessive workloads on some officers, he said.

Residents in the town have meanwhile voiced ongoing concern over ambulance response times.

Jennifer Passmore said: "It took the ambulance around 25 minutes when my three year old daughter was struggling to breath, they advised us to get the nearest defibrillator which was only at the end of our street, the ambulance guys were amazing but it felt like a lifetime waiting for them."