Neil said: “These type of headlines do nothing to help the morale of our members and are misleading and simplistic.

“This suggests somehow that officers have no appetite to investigate some types of crime and this is very far from the truth.

“The fact is that the amount of crime reported to us vastly outweighs the resources we have. Be assured that that officers are driven to investigate and bring offenders to justice this is at the core of what they do every day.

“It’s also important to remember the demands placed on forces are not all about crime. We need to do more to focus on the question ‘what should the police be not doing rather than what they are doing? This is a debate that must be had and questions asked of other bodies beyond the police.

“There is still a significant legacy left by the huge cuts to policing despite recent efforts to rectify the situation but this isn’t a quick fix.

“The whole of the Criminal Justice System is bursting at the seams and the police are only a component of that system and more needs to be done across the board to make improvements.

“Kent is working hard to recruit more officers and this is of course very welcome but I suspect it will never reach the demands made but will at least aim to improve them.”

See the full HMICFRS report here https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/…/noticeable-diffe…/

In the report, HMIC Matt Parr said the public had "rumbled" that the police do not have the capacity to deal with common crimes, such as burglaries or car crime, and have given up reporting incidents to police.

"I think particularly in the volume crime area the public has rumbled that the police capacity to deal with this is extremely limited."

Mr Parr added: "There are some strikingly low figures about car crime resolution, meaning most of the public simply give up reporting it because the chances of anything positive happening are so slim."

"The country is just short of investigators," he said. "There's lots of forces that haven't got enough detectives - therefore, very often, crimes aren't allocated to the right people to investigate."