Knife injuries fall during lockdown

THE number of people being admitted to Birmingham hospitals following attacks with knives has fallen for the first time in four years.

An anti-knife charity said the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown may have played a part in the drop in numbers.

Birmingham hospitals treated 410 knife injuries in 2019/20. That was down from 430 hospitalisations recorded in 2018/19.

Though a small drop, it is the first year-on-year decrease seen since at least 2015/16, NHS Digital figures show.

The majority of the fall was accounted for by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. It saw the highest number of hospitalisations – but a decrease from 355 to 320.

Other hospital trusts covering Birmingham have seen numbers of hospitalisations stay the same or rise. There were 60 at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, up from 55 the year before, while numbers have been stable for the past three years at the Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, at around 20 hospitalisations.

Numbers are rounded to the nearest five to ‘‘preserve patient privacy’’ and the data for 2019/20 is provisional.

But separate figures from the Office for National Statistics show serious crime was still slightly higher in the West Midlands over the same period.

In 2019/20, there were 3,437 serious crimes, such as murders, robberies, sexual offences and assaults, involving a knife or a sharp object. That was up from 3,428 in 2018/19. It was also the highest number seen since records began in 2010/11.

Patrick Green, boss of anti-knife charity The Ben Kinsella Trust, said: “It is probable that Covid-19 has been one of the factors responsible for this drop. As hospitals prepared for Covid-19 lockdown, it is likely that admissions will have been reduced to avoid infection.

“Lockdown, too, will have played its part in lowering these figures, with fewer people on our streets in February and March, which resulted in fewer street crimes.”

But he warned that there was still a long way to go before the region can start to think that it was turning the tide on knife crime as the recent figures were still 18 per cent higher than four years ago.

Nationally, there were around 4,565 hospitalisations due to knives or sharp objects last year, down from 4,920 the year before.

At the same time, police figures for serious crimes involving knives and sharp objects rose in 2019/20 compared to the previous year, from 43,706 to 46,265.