16
Sep
2015
By Calvin at 09:13 GMT, 10 years ago
Yesterday the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) presented the findings of their rural crime survey (England and Wales) to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Rural Services and it doesn’t make good reading.
Here’s an edited version of their press release.
The survey of 17,000 rural residents suggests that the cost of rural crime could exceed £800m a year, which dwarfs previous estimates by a factor of 21!
The survey also indicates that young families and farmers are the most frequent victims of crime, with the average cost of those crimes to a household being over £2,500 and for a business over £4,000.
There also appears to be a vicious circle of low expectations, leading to chronic under-reporting, anger, frustration and worry. The result is increasing fear of crime and significantly lower satisfaction levels in the police than the national average.
As a consequence of the findings, the NRCN make the following six recommendations:
- Fair funding for rural areas
- More joined up working with partners and communities
- Build on rural resilience
- Embed best practice
- Develop new policies and ways of working
- Ensure a more targeted approach within rural communities
The key survey results are:
- The cost of rural crime is estimated at £800 million, equivalent to £200 for every household in the countryside.
- Thirty-nine percent of rural people are very or fairly worried about becoming a victim of crime, compared to 19% nationally
- Thirty-two percent of respondents are more fearful of becoming victims of crime than five years ago, compared to only 3% who are less fearful.
- Rural businesses are the most fearful of becoming victims of crime, with 51% very or fairly fearful, closely followed by younger families.
- Thirty-nine percent of rural people rate the police as good or excellent
- Thirty- two percent of rural businesses rate the police as good or excellent
- Nationally, 63% of the population rates the police as good or excellent showing rural communities have a significantly lower satisfaction rate than their urban counterparts.
- Satisfaction levels drop to 23% when it comes to the rural public’s perceptions of the police’s ability to solve crime.
- Twenty-seven percent did not report the last crime of which they were a victim. This means Home Office figures of 294,000 rural crimes between April 2014 and May 2015 could be incorrect and the actual number of crimes could be as high as 403,000.
- The vast majority of those surveyed feel they very or fairly strongly belong in their community, with 27% feeling that sense of belonging has increased in the last five years.
- Twenty-five percent of people also felt that their community pulled together to improve their neighbourhood
- Two issues of greatest concern to the rural community were road safety (63%) and fly-tipping, which is now a civil offence (61%).
Julia Mulligan, chair of the NRCN and Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, said: “Our report comes at a critical time when the structure and funding for policing are being fundamentally reassessed. Some of the findings in this report make uncomfortable reading but it is vitally important for the reality of rural crime to be fully acknowledged and acted upon. Its actual scale is clearly much greater than we had previously known; £800m is a big number. The low satisfaction rates also need to be a wakeup call for police forces in rural areas and everything should be done to harness the opportunities presented. Good, accessible local policing is central to this and I believe police forces which significantly shrink their local teams in rural areas do so at their peril.”
Download the full report ‘The true cost of crime in rural areas’ at this link: http://www.nationalruralcrimenetwork.net/content/uploads/2015/09/NRCN-National-Rural-Crime-Sur...pdf
Source: National Rural Crime Network http://www.nationalruralcrimenetwork.net/
