ONS crime figures back calls for sustained investment in policing

27 January 2020

Knife crime in Derbyshire has risen by almost a quarter in the last year prompting calls for sustained investment in policing from Derbyshire Police Federation chair Tony Wetton.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), released yesterday, show that knife or sharp instrument offences have soared by 24 per cent.

Tony said the statistics, which are published in the latest ONS police-recorded crime figures for the year ending September 2019, were ‘grim’.

They showed that there were 718 such offences in Derbyshire in the period between October 2018 and September 2019. That was up from 578 during the previous 12 months.

Tony said: “These figures make for pretty grim reading, and my fear is that they will continue to get worse until we get proper, sustained investment in policing.

“We have been subjected to savage cuts over the last decade and that is translating into spiralling crime figures. We need the proper help and resources, which includes extra officers on our streets, to be able to fight this crime epidemic.”

The new statistics show that there were 70,699 recorded crimes in Derbyshire in the last year, a rise of 22 per cent.

Violence against the person was up 60 per cent, sexual offences were up 28 per cent and robbery was up eight per cent. Theft, meanwhile, was down four per cent, burglary was down six per cent and shoplifting dropped by seven per cent. 

Nationally, there has been a six per cent fall in homicide, there has been a record seven per cent rise in knife/sharp instrument offences and a 12 per cent rise in robbery*.

National Federation chair John Apter said: “The Government’s funding announcement for policing was a move in the right direction, but it goes nowhere near enough on undoing the damage from the past decade of cuts.

“We need long-term sustainable funding which must make a positive difference to policing. This is what policing needs, and what the public deserves.”

* The figures do not include data from Greater Manchester Police who were unable to provide an update due to IT problems.