Neighbourhood Watch Update

4/5/2017

Message sent by
Helen Thorne (Police, Communications Officer, Thames Valley)
Thames Valley Police has today (3/5) issued crime statistics which cover the past twelve months.

The latest figures show that there were 138,710 crimes reported across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire from 1 April 2016 until 31 March 2017. This is a 7.2% increase to the previous year (2015/16) where there were 129,449 reported crimes within the same time frame.

Of these 8,038 crimes were reported in West Berkshire Local Police Area (LPA), a rise of 7.8% on last year.

The increase in crime reports is reflected nationally (ONS Crime Survey of England and Wales), and is largely attributed to improvements in compliance with National Crime Recording Standards, following recommendations made by HMIC in 2014.

Overall crime levels in Thames Valley still remain low compared with five and ten years ago. There were 66,976 fewer crimes recorded in this timeframe compared with five years ago (205,686), and 8,357 fewer recorded offences compared with ten years ago (147,067).

Following the release of the figures, Superintendent Jim Weems, LPA Commander for West Berkshire, said: “Whilst we have seen an increase in overall reports of crime this year, figures remain low per head of population and we have seen a decrease in some key areas.

“Our officers continue to work with our communities to put in place simple steps that will help them to protect themselves and their property from becoming victims of crime.

“Campaigns such as #Protectyourworld in the Autumn and our February rural crime campaign are good examples of how we have raised awareness and confidence in our communities in reporting incidents to us.

“This raised awareness and confidence is reflected in the increases we have seen in reports of crime types such as sexual offences. Despite this increase we know that this remains an under reported crime and we are committed to encouraging people to come forward and report these incidents to us.

“Despite some of the increases we have seen this year West Berkshire local police area continues to be a very safe place to live, work and visit and those incidents which do occur are dealt with robustly.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank my staff and our partners for their hard work over this past year and, most importantly, extend my gratitude to our communities for their continued support.”