Trends in Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) crime and Home Office police recorded crime for England and Wales, by offence type. Also includes more detailed data on crime such as violence, fraud and anti-social behaviour.

In 2023/24 there were 25,205 crimes against public justice recorded by the police in Scotland, with the 2020/21 figure the highest for this type of crime since 2011/12, when there were 26,635 crimes of this type recorded.

There were approximately 2.01 million violent crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2023/24, compared with almost 2.11 million offences in the previous reporting period.

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

Firearms, knife- and sharp-instrument offences, offences involving a corrosive substance, hospital admissions for assault with sharp objects, fraud, offences flagged as domestic abuse-related, corruption, anti-social behaviour, perceptions, and non-notifiable incidents.

There were 16,624 fraud crimes recorded by the police in Scotland in 2023/24, a slight fall on 2022/23, but a significant increase compared with previous reporting years, such as in 2019/20 when there were 11,939 of these offences.

Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Home Office police recorded crime data, by quarterly time periods.

The crime rate of England and Wales in 2023/24 was 110.5 crimes per thousand people, when fraud and computer misuse was included and 89.7 when it was excluded. This represents one of the highest crime rates in this time period, and a significant increase when compared to the mid-2010s.

Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) on perceptions of the police, criminal justice system, crime and anti-social behaviour, and prevalence of intimate personal violence.

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2023/24, at 89.7 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland which had 55 crimes per 1,000 population and Northern Ireland, at 52.3 crimes per 1,000 people. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from 93.4 crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just 52.3 by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2022/23 there were approximately 6.74 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, with this falling to 6.66 million in 2023/24. Although crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend has been reversed in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10 for example, government spending on the police stood at around 19.3 billion pounds, with this cut to between 17.58 billion and 16.35 billion between 2012/13 and 2017/18. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. As recently as 2019, there were just 150,000 police officers in the UK, with this increasing to 171,000 by 2023. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from 9.1 billion pounds in 2009/10, to just 7.35 billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. As of the first quarter of 2023, for example, it took on average 676 days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with 412 days in 2014. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent months.

Information from a new module of questions included in the Telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales (TCSEW) around perceptions of crime, the police and anti-social behaviour during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, feelings of safety and experiences of harassment. Data on children’s online activity are also presented. These tables are no longer produced.

Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and metal theft offences recorded by the police, including demographic and offence type breakdowns and time series data.

For the year ending March 2023, there were 53,915 offences recorded by the police in England and Wales as; 'sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over', the most of any sexual offence in this reporting year.

This report brings together, for the first time, a range of official statistics on hate crime in England and Wales from across the crime and criminal justice system. It is the third in a series of cross-departmental reports collating information from the Office for National

There were approximately 5.05 million crime offences recorded by the police in England in 2023/24, a decrease when compared with the previous reporting year.

There were approximately 6.66 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2023/24, compared with approximately 6.74 million in the 2022/23 reporting year. Although a slight decline on the previous reporting year, 2023/24 saw the second-highest number of crimes recorded in the provided time period, with the low number of crimes reported in 2020/21 due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place throughout that reporting year. In general, the number of crime offenses in England and Wales has been rising at a fairly rapid pace, increasing from just over four million in 2013/14, to the high seen in 2022/23. Reversing the trend after a decade of cuts The rise in crime during this period has led to serious questions about how to reverse this trend, and if the police have enough manpower and resources to counter it. Due to austerity measures pursued by British governments after 2010, police forces were forced to cut officer numbers in successive years between 2010 and 2017, resulting in a net decrease of around 22,000 officers. In more recent years, public sector expenditure on the police force has started to increase and reached 25.2 billion British pounds in 2022/23, while officer numbers reached 171,000 in 2023, the highest figure since 2010. Crime rates highest in Northern England In 2022/23, the police force area with the highest crime rate in this year was Cleveland, located in the North East of England, which had approximately 147.7 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with the England and Wales average of 93.6. Among UK regions, the three regions of Northern England; Yorkshire, the North East, and the North West, had the highest crime rates of any regions. The region of England with the lowest crime rate was the South West, at 69.9 crimes per 1,000 people.

Numbers of recorded offences, and rates of offences per thousand population, by broad crime grouping, by financial year and borough.

Rate is given as per thousand population, and are calculated using mid-year population from the first part of the financial year eg For Financial year 2008-09, mid-year estimates for 2008 are used.

Offences: These are confirmed reports of crimes being committed. All data relates to "notifiable offences" - which are designated categories of crimes that all police forces in England and Wales are required to report to the Home Office
Crime rates are not available for Heathrow due to no population figures

Monthly crime data by borough and ward is available from the Met Police website, available around one month after month end.

The total number of recorded crimes per month is also shown. A fuller breakdown by 32 different types of crime is available on the MPS website.

There were changes to the police recorded crime classifications from April 2012. Therefore caution should be used when comparing sub-groups of crime figures from 2012/13 with earlier years.

Action Fraud have taken over the recording of fraud offences on behalf of individual police forces. This process began in April 2011 and was rolled out to all police forces by March 2013. Due to this change caution should be applied when comparing data over this transitional period and with earlier years.

Link to data on Met Police website.

Crime stats on ONS website