Crime: Rural Areas

(asked on 28th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce rural crime; and what assessment her Department has made of the impact on communities of rural crime in (a) Somerton and Frome and (b) the South West.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 8th March 2022

We are committed to driving down rural crime, which is why the Government is providing funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit. We have also tabled amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to introduce tougher sentencing and improved police powers for hare coursing.

Tackling rural crime is a priority for this Government and we are supporting the police by recruiting an additional 20,000 police officers by March 2023. As of 31 December 2021, polices forces in England and Wales have recruited over 11,000 additional officers as part of the three-year Police Uplift Programme. Avon and Somerset police has recruited 254 additional uplift officers against a combined year 1 and 2 allocation of 273 officers. As of 31 December 2021, police forces in the South West region have recruited 712 additional uplift officers against a combined year 1 and 2 allocation of 843.

The Government has not undertaken a specific assessment of the impact on communities or rural crime in either (a) Somerton and Frome and (b) the South West. The independent Crime Survey for England and Wales continues to show that, for those crimes covered by the Survey, people in rural areas are less likely to be the victims of crime than those in urban areas. This is echoed by DEFRA’s Statistical Digest of Rural England, published in January 2022, that states “average crime rates are lower in rural areas than urban areas”. We recognise too that within rural communities some crimes are unique and specific in that they do not occur as frequently in urban areas.

Reticulating Splines