Community policing forums have expressed shock at the slow response times to the police's 10111 call centres.

Twenty such facilities are dotted around the country and some reportedly take hours to dispatch police units to crime scenes.

Call centres were criticised in Parliament this year after a probe by the Auditor General revealed the system was not functioning as it should.

When it came to response times, the Western Cape 10111 centre fared better than those in other provinces.

The average time it took to dispatch a unit to a crime was 11 minutes but it took an additional 27 minutes for that unit to respond to the call.

Grassy Park CPF Secretary Phillip Bam said this remained unacceptably slow.

"Twenty seven minutes for the police to reach you. By that time, you are long gone dead or people have long gone run away who were breaking into you house or stealing," Bam said.

The Eastern Cape was worse off.

At the Mthatha 10111 call centre, the average time for a unit to be dispatched to a scene is 327 minutes, almost six hours.