A few days ago, the Argus newspaper cited our data showing a marked increase in recorded violent crime across Sussex. I just ran a report on our Analysis page and actually, Sussex is far from alone, or even anywhere near the top. All Police Forces apart from Northern Ireland have shown an at least 50% increase and up to nearly 4 times increase in reported violent crime between November 2013 and November 2017. The caveats of course need to be emphasised;

i) crime that was not showing up as reported or recorded may now be much more likely to be so

ii) Not all “violent” crime is actually violent crime against the person – it includes verbal abuse

I’d also like to add that whereas Police Forces have undoubtedly come under budgetary pressure in recent years, it would be a mistake to see a unicausal relationship between Police budgets going up or down and the level of crime.

London has 2 Police Forces, the big one, the Metropolitan Police Service and a tiny one, the City of London Police covering the main Financial District known as the City of London. For reasons unknown, the City of London Police have not shared their crime data for the last 2 months, but we are told an update is due within the month.

There are 1.6 million postcodes and this has an impact on approx 1,700 postcodes that fall within the City of London. So it means that all boundaries, postcodes, constituencies etc. that overlap or fall within this area are registering zero crime for the last 2 months. Obviously that’s not the case but we just want you to be aware.