Is crime going up?

1. Every figure is read from the publisher's own file by a script, and keeps the cell it came from. None is typed in.
2. ONS stores many figures with more decimal places than it prints. We keep each at the places ONS's own cell format prints.
3. Force figures before the latest two years come from the Home Office, which publishes each force's count by quarter. We add the four quarters of each financial year. The script checks every force's two latest years against ONS Tables P1 and P4, and all forces plus British Transport Police against ONS Table A5a in every year from the year to March 2003. They match exactly; if they did not, nothing would be published.
4. A change between two years is ONS's own wherever ONS printed one. Otherwise it is marked "Our working" and uses ONS's formula: (later count − earlier count) ÷ earlier count × 100, rounded to a whole number as ONS rounds its own.
5. "About X in 10" rounds ONS's percentage to the nearest ten. The percentage itself is printed beside it.
6. The reasons for not reporting are ONS's five most common, in shorter words. The long chart shows survey figures, published in thousands, in millions; nothing else is changed. Hover to see each figure as published.

Which count for which crime

ONS's guidance, with each crime's change on the year before as ONS printed it:

"Could be chance": ONS tested the survey change and did not find it statistically significant. Police changes are not tested. Survey: Tables A1a and A1b. Police: Table A5a and Worksheet B6. All in Crime in England and Wales: Appendix tables.

In their own words

• "Accredited official statistics using data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and official statistics using data from police recorded crime." ONS
• "The CSEW is better for tracking long-term trends in: violence with or without injury, theft offences, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse." "Police data are preferred for: homicide, offences involving weapons, robbery." ONS, Crime in England and Wales, section 3
• "Police data, however, can show trends in specific offences that are well reported and well recorded, such as residential burglary, and can highlight emerging trends." ONS
• "Police recorded crime is not considered a reliable indicator of overall crime trends because of changes in police activity and recording practices. Increases in volume over the last 10 years have been largely influenced by improvements in recording standards." ONS, Crime in England and Wales, section 3
• "Changes in recording practices have affected the reliability of these figures, particularly for violent crime. This makes them better indicators of police activity than crime trends." ONS
• "Police recorded sexual offences are not a good indicator of trends over time. Improvements in police recording practices, the introduction of new offences, and increased reporting by victims have contributed to the level of offences in recent years." ONS
• "The survey excludes crimes against commercial or public sector bodies, tourists, or those living in communal establishments like care homes, student halls of residence, and prisons." ONS
• "As a survey that asks people whether they have experienced victimisation, homicides cannot be included." ONS user guide
• "The CSEW was extended to include children aged 10 to 15 years from year ending (YE) March 2010 to YE March 2025." ONS user guide
• "When fieldwork resumed, the response rate was considerably lower than prior to the suspension of fieldwork. The response rate for YE March 2023 was 42%, compared with 64% for YE March 2020. Preliminary analysis shows that 48% of adults responded to the main survey." ONS user guide
• "Our 2024 review of the CSEW was undertaken following the temporary suspension of the accreditation in July 2022 due to quality concerns, including a drop in the survey response rate." OSR, 2 April 2026
• "We are pleased to confirm the reaccreditation of the CSEW estimates, starting from the next release of the statistics on 24 October 2024." OSR, 17 October 2024
• UK Statistics Authority, January 2014, noting "that there is accumulating evidence that suggests the underlying data on crimes recorded by the police may not be reliable." and "Therefore, the Authority has removed the National Statistics designation from statistics based on recorded crime data". UKSA, paragraphs 1.2.3 and 1.2.5
• "For these crime types, police recorded crime provides the most reliable measure of trends in crime." "These include lower-volume, higher-harm crimes that are not captured well by the survey such as knife-enabled crime and offences involving firearms, and crimes which are not covered by the survey such as homicide and crimes against businesses." OSR, 2 April 2026
• "Users should draw on both the CSEW and police recorded crime to get the most complete picture of crime in England and Wales." OSR
• "Claims that the CSEW undersamples cities and oversamples rural areas are incorrect. To account for differences in response rates and potential non-response bias across different geographical areas, ONS applies a standard statistical method called weighting." OSR
• "The CSEW consistently finds that most respondents believe crime has increased in recent years, even when the survey shows long-term declines in many types of crime." OSR
• "Therefore, recorded cybercrime and fraud data are not presented in this bulletin." ONS
• "When considering crime data across the UK, recorded crime statistics for England & Wales and Northern Ireland are not directly comparable with those in Scotland. Furthermore, differences in legislation and common law also have an impact on the comparability of recorded crime statistics between Scotland and the other UK nations." Scottish Government
• "While the Police Service of Northern Ireland does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Home Office, the same recording practices are followed and applied within Northern Ireland. However differences in legislation between the two jurisdictions must be taken into account when making comparisons between police recorded crime statistics for England & Wales and those for Northern Ireland." PSNI