“Since 2010 police officer numbers were slashed by the Governments lead by David Cameron and Theresa May – despite repeated warnings from The Police Federation at local, regional and National levels.

“While numbers were reducing crime was soaring, becoming more complex and partner agencies were withdrawing from collaborative working leaving the Police to pick up the pieces in areas such as mental health, and children in care.”

Matt added: “The cuts were so deep they will take years if not decades to recover from. HMICFRS know this but has chosen to make no mention of it in these reports.

“The 20,000 additional officers promised by the current Government are very welcome but they will take a number of years to be fully trained and will still only get us to a similar number we had in 2010 – over a decade ago.

“It is disappointing that HMICFRS have focused on the symptoms rather than the cause.”

See the full 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."