Huge rise in crime across Warwickshire - The Stratford Observer

Huge rise in crime across Warwickshire

Stratford Editorial 26th Jul, 2017   0

AN ALARMING rise in crime in Warwickshire in the last year has been revealed by new official figures.

Crime has gone up in our county by 19 per cent – way above the national rise of 10 per cent across England and Wales, the largest annual rise for a decade.

The national rise has prompted police chiefs to call for more government funding, and reverse cuts implemented in England and Wales since 2010 which have resulted in 138 fewer police officers in Warwickshire.

Warwickshire Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Seccombe said he was confident there were enough officers in Warwickshire to keep communities safe – but added pressures on the police service had never been greater.




He said: “With Warwickshire Police needing to make £6.1million of savings in the current year and uncertainty on the amount of funding to be made available from central government, it is difficult to make accurate predictions as to future policing numbers.

“I will be continuing to press the case that the challenges here in Warwickshire are still significant and that any redistribution of the central pot of police funding must be done in a fair way for both urban metropolitan forces and smaller more rural forces like ours.”


He said that while rises in recorded crime were a cause for concern, some of the biggest increases were in areas where offences were previously being under-reported by victims- such as child sexual exploitation crimes, which have increased by almost 50 percent in 12 months.

“In these cases, increases in recorded offences are positive as we know that this has been a type of crime that has been under-reported in the past,” he said.

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