I don't often cover national news on this website, but the new figures are pretty startling, so I thought I'd share them here. The headline finding is that people living in areas run by a Labour Police and Crime Commissioner [PCC] are 40 per cent more likely to be victims of crime in areas run by Labour. That is pretty terrible by anybody's measure. It shows what might happen here in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland were Labour to get control once again.
Nationally, since 2010, crime excluding fraud has fallen by 55 per cent under Conservative Home Secretaries. In recent years, the Conservative government delivered on its 2019 manifesto promise to recruit over 20,000 extra police officers to keep our streets safe. That includes hundreds of additional officers here in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
Other highlights include:
- The proportion of crimes (excluding fraud and computer misuse) resulting in a charge and/or summons this year increased slightly to 5.7% (compared with 5.5% the previous year), halting the long-term downward trend since the introduction of the Outcomes Framework in the year ending March 2015, when 16% of crimes were resolved with a charge and/or summons
- In terms of volumes of investigations closed, over 5.0 million offences recorded in the year ending March 2023 (excluding fraud and computer misuse) were assigned an outcome, an increase from 4.6 million the previous year. Within this, the volume of charge/summons outcomes increased from 290,134 to 312,167 (an 8% increase). This also represented a slight increase in the charge/summons rate, with 5.7% of offences (excluding fraud and computer misuse) recorded in the year ending March 2023 being resolved this way, compared with 5.5% the previous year. The proportion of offences not yet assigned an outcome fell from 11.2% in the year ending March 2022 to 8.0% this year, returning to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The proportion of offences not yet assigned an outcome decreased from 11.2% last year to 8.0% this year, returning to levels reported in the year ending March 2021 (at 7.8%)
- For the charge/summons outcome, the average number of days remained the same as the previous year, at 44 day
This is good news, but it is not good enough. As your Police and Crime Commissioner I am pledged under my manifesto of 2021 to work tirelessly to improve crime prevention, victim support and policing in our communities. I want to see these figures improve even further.
