People applying for firearms licences; or making enquires through our 0800 phone line; or seeking permits and visitor licences, will have noticed that recently our response times have been slower than they had been.

This is because across all these areas we are experiencing extremely high demand for these services, which means it is taking us longer to respond.

Take our 0800 telephone system for example, in September 2024 our call centre team received 8,825 calls from the firearms community. One year later in September 2025, that number had almost doubled to 16,158 (nearly 550 calls a day).

We apologise for the delays. Our people are working hard to answer all the calls as quickly as they can. Similarly, our people are working hard to process licence applications, and provide permits and visitor licences.

Learn more about how the high demand is impacting our services and the things you may be able to do to help us respond as quickly as possible.