Police solve no burglaries in half of the country

Police have failed to solve a single burglary in nearly half of all neighbourhoods in England and Wales in the past three years despite pledging to attend the scene of every domestic break-in to boost detection rates.

A Telegraph analysis of police data shows that no burglaries were solved in 48 per cent of neighbourhoods – areas covering between 1,000 and 3,000 people – in the past three years.

In October 2022, all 43 police chiefs in England and Wales made the landmark promise to attend every break-in.

Home Office figures show that the proportion of burglaries resulting in a charge fell in the following year to 3.9 per cent (fewer than one in 25 reported burglaries) from 4.6 per cent in 2022.

In the worst hot spots covering areas of up to 6,000 people more than 150 cases have gone unsolved in the past three years, prompting warnings by victims’ campaigners and policing experts that burglary has been effectively decriminalised in parts of the UK.

Dame Vera Baird, the former victims’ commissioner, said the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s pledge to boost detection rates was “an empty gesture” in many parts of Britain.

“What these figures show is that in half of the neighbourhoods, burgling somebody’s home is a free hit. The criminal can walk away with the proceeds and never look back,” she said.

“Burglary can be very very upsetting and traumatising; it can make people afraid to go out in case it happens again and afraid to stay at home for the very same reason. Why are there no arrests, no prosecutions and no deterrence in almost half of all these cases?”

Harvey Redgrave, a former No 10 policy adviser who is chief executive of crime consultancy Crest Advisory, said: “It is of real concern that despite the high-profile commitment to attend the scene of every burglary, the police do not appear to be improving the rate at which burglaries are solved and offenders brought to justice.

“Public confidence in the police will not improve unless victims believe reporting crime will make a difference. These statistics also reinforce the need for a cross-government strategy to deal with the minority of highly prolific offenders who are responsible for a large proportion of burglaries and theft more widely.”

The Home Office data show that in the worst-performing force, Hertfordshire, only 2.2 per cent of burglaries – just over one in 50 – resulted in a charge last year compared with 9.6 per cent in the best, South Wales.

Nearly three quarters (31 out of 43) of police forces saw a fall in their charging rates for burglary in the past year although there was a fall in the overall number of break-ins. Just 12 saw the rates increase with West Mercia, Bedfordshire and North Wales registering the biggest rises of over one percentage point in a year.

The proportion of neighbourhoods where no burglaries have been solved has risen from 46 per cent in the three years to 2021 to 48 per cent – 15,371 out of 31,860 neighbourhoods – in the three years to both 2022 and 2023, according to the Telegraph analysis.

Police are failing to solve a single burglary in more than one in four (27 per cent) “hot spot” neighbourhoods, defined as those with at least 10 break-ins unsolved in the past three years.

The areas with the worst records were Outer Rothwell in West Yorkshire where all 165 burglaries in the past three years went unsolved, followed by Bransgore and Burley, Hampshire (152 break-ins unsolved), and Lower Quinton and Ettington, Warwickshire (137 unsolved).

Rory Geoghegan, a former No 10 adviser on crime, and the founder of the Public Safety Foundation, said police chiefs failing to reduce burglaries should be replaced.

“The crime-fighting minority of chiefs are already well on the way to hunting down burglars in their forces. We need the rest to either follow their lead, or frankly step down to make way for those who can,” he said.

“Police and crime commissioners should be prepared to use their power to replace chiefs who are failing to deliver the common sense policing that the public are crying out for, and voters should only reward those politicians serious about fighting crime.”

Deputy Chief Constable Alex Franklin-Smith, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for burglary, said the 2022 pledge on visiting crime scenes was “only the first step” in improving detection rates, pointing to new guidance drawn up last year for all forces to share good practice and “enhance” their capability to investigate and prevent break-ins.

“The latest national data shows that nationally burglary incidents have once again reduced, following a five-year trend and while outcomes are still lower than we would want them to be, there has been a positive shift in the right direction,” he said.

‘They know they can get away with it’

By Albert Tait

Kim Peters, 62, was looking after a friend’s house in Cuffley, Hertfordshire, in October when one morning she arrived to find it trashed by burglars who had broken in through a back window overnight, taking jewellery and cash.

Surveillance footage from a camera in the house showed two masked men ransacking the property, said Mrs Peters, a former Met police officer who has lived in the village for 24 years, having served 21 years as a general patrol officer in east London, in Forest Gate, West Ham, and Leyton.

She phoned the police on 999, fearing that the suspects might be still in the house but was disappointed by the response of officers. “I spoke quietly because I didn’t know if the suspects were still in the house,” she said. “I relayed what had happened and asked if they could get someone down here.

“The responder said ‘can you hear anything’ and I said ‘no, I can’t’ and he said ‘well, that means they’re gone’. I couldn’t believe it. I told him: ‘I didn’t know the police were issued with crystal balls’.

“When I was in the police, I’ve had burglars twice leap out at me from wardrobes, so how did he know they had gone. While I had him on the phone, I did a search, and I told him: ‘If you hear a scream and a thump, it’s me having thrown the burglar off the balcony’.

“I was disgusted they were sending me into a property where there could have been multiple burglars.”

‘Like a dog with no teeth’

She said she had worked on more than 100 burglaries in her time, and was shocked it took police from her first report at 9am until 4pm before an officer turned up. “If I was still in the force, I would have sent a unit right round,” she said. “That’s all now gone out of the window. It’s not their fault, but the police are like a dog with no teeth.”

It was the first of three mistakes, she said: “One, they didn’t turn up when the burglary took place. Two, I was directed into a house that could have had suspects on the premises. And three, I didn’t see the police women who turned up making house-to-house enquiries, getting on it quickly.”

She said residents of Cuffley had lost confidence in the police to deal with burglaries. “Round here has got ridiculous. Cars are going off the driveways, some people are paying for private security,” she said. “Back in the day, if you got a burglary, you attended. You attended every single burglary.

“It hurts me to hear the police criticised, but it should be a police force, not a police service. They should enforce the law. People need to see you. Someone has been into their home, their sanctuary, their castle, their safe place. It’s been trespassed on.

“In general, people feel very let down. It hurts me to hear that. The general feeling around here is that the police aren’t dealing with it. People think the police don’t care because they don’t turn up. That’s wrong. It never used to be that way.

“Police used to turn up to every single burglary. You are a service to people who are seriously in distress. I know numbers are depleted. I know they’re running around chasing their tails. But people want to see them.

“You want to see the police on the street. You want to know if you pick up the phone after something terrible has happened, they will be there. Just because that person isn’t being confronted with a shotgun or a knife, it doesn’t mean that police should ignore them.

“A lot of burglars are masked up. They often wave at the camera. They know they will get away with it.”

Hertfordshire has the worst charging rate for burglary of the 43 police forces at 2.2 per cent, with Cuffley and Northaw having the highest number of unsolved burglaries in the past three years at 82.

Shop had 15 e-bikes stolen

There has been at least one burglary or attempted burglary each of the seven years that Sebastian Bowley, 21, has been a mechanic at New Forest Cycling, a bicycle hire shop in Burley, Hampshire. The community has suffered one of the highest number of unsolved burglaries in the past three years, at 152.

The worst one, he said, came in 2019 when thieves used angle grinders to break in through a glass door and stole 15 electric bikes, or e-bikes, worth around £30,000.

Police officers visited the following day and made a report, he said, but the bikes were never found and the suspects were never caught. “All the police really did was make a report,” he said. “And even if we report things to the police, what are they going to do?

“If we have an inkling that it’s a certain person, they can’t just go and search them. The criminals know that nothing happens. We think it’s local boys.”

Following the burglary, the shop has installed reinforced shutters on three doors and put in alarms. “The only way we can stop it is by protecting ourselves,” Mr Bowley said. “Police can’t stop it. There’s nothing they can do. When we got pinched, it was two days of constantly calling our customers to tell them they couldn’t hire an e-bike. We suffered from it.”