Burglary increases across Thames Valley is 'anomaly'

Thames Valley Police force statistics for the year April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, shows that there has been a three per cent increase in resident burglary crimes from 4,942 incidents last year to 5,075 incidents this year.

There has been a seven per cent increase of burglaries from sheds and garages from 3,342 last year to 3,579 this year and a six per cent increase of personal robbery crimes from 1,022 last year to 1,088 this year.

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Chief Constable Jason Hogg said these figures are ‘an anomaly’ but states the force ‘is rebalancing’ its focuses in the next year to target these offences.

Chief Constable Jason Hogg (Image: Oxford Mail)

He said: “Yeah I think it is an anomaly but I think we know what happened. We have retargeted our detective teams to focus on violence against women and girls and knife crime.

“Those are the two areas where we have had our successes but we have taken officers who were responsible for robbery and burglary in order to do that.”

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The statistics show that knife crime is down by 10.8 per cent and that they’ve increased rape charges by 17.4 per cent.

He continued: “Now, I would love more resources and I asked for more resources but not enough that I think we need so that has led to a small increase.

“So we're going to be rebalancing that in the coming year even though levels of burglary, robbery, and car crime is still very low.”

He said that these types of offences are down by about 75 per cent from when he first joined the force in 1990.

He added that they are also down by about 18 per cent compared with pre-coronavirus pandemic figures before 2020.

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Chief Constable Hogg added: “So we are almost historic low but that being the case I do not want to become complacent, particularly on burglary.

“Even though we only have 9 or 10 burglaries a day across the whole of the Thames Valley and there are two and a half million people who live there, the reality is when people are burgled - how does that make people feel in that community?

“There are homes that have a devastating impact but it is an area we continue to focus on and I almost want the fact that we have a slight rise that shouldn't occur to ensure that we need to make sure that we double our efforts when it comes to the driving down burglary.”