Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of crime in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last five years; and what assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the level of crime in those areas.

The Home Office collects data from police forces on police recorded crime, broken down by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership Area, including Coventry. However, data is not collected at parliamentary constituency level. The latest data, including the number of recorded offences can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables

The Government recognises the significant impact crimes can have on victims and communities, which is why the Government is ensuring the police have the resources they need alongside investments focused on preventing and reducing particular types of crime.

To assist the police, the Government has funded an additional 20,000 police officers to support existing forces and organisations in England and Wales. Specifically, the West Midlands Police were allocated an additional 366 officers in the first year of the police uplift, and in December 2020 357 officers had been recruited. For year two of the programme, the force has been allocated 343 additional officers.

From 2019 to 2022, the West Midlands PCC has been allocated £15,541,485 to fund a surge in police operational activity, alongside £10,110,000 to develop the West Midlands VRU. Furthermore, in response to COVID-19, the West Midlands VRU received an additional £483,928 to invest in frontline organisations working on violence prevention projects which support vulnerable children and young people. West Midlands PCC have also been allocated £549,040 through the Safer Streets Fund, which provides neighbourhood measures such as better lighting and CCTV to better protect our streets from crime, to tackle neighbourhood related crime in Coventry.