Countryside crime victims: there’s no point calling police

A QUARTER of crime victims in rural areas don’t even bother to r eport t he of f ences as t hey have so little faith in the police solving them.

Nearly half of countryside residents don’t believe officers take rural crime seriously – despite a staggering 94 per cent saying the issue was having a ‘significant’ impact on communities.

Of the 8,000 people surveyed by the Countryside Alliance, 38 per cent had fallen victim to a crime in the preceding year, with the most common rural offences being flyt i pping, t heft of agricultural machinery, trespass, theft from o ut bui l di ngs, wil dl i f e c r i me such as poaching, and animal rights activism.

The report will say that Britain has ‘ a rural population simply putting up with the crime they experience and making do as best they can. There is often no escape... with the fear of crime doing just as much damage as the crimes that are committed’.

Of the 24 per cent who decided not to report a crime, 54 per cent did so because they felt it would be a waste of time and 46 per cent believed the police could not have done anything.

Last night, Sarah Lee, head of policy at the Countryside Alliance, said: ‘We are concerned that the people who make up these communities don’t get the support through public services that are more widely available in urban areas.

‘Coupled with an absence of a visible police presence and the fact that rural crime is often not taken seriously, it is leaving those rural communities feeling undervalued and even more isolated.’

She said that as well as offences unique to rural areas, crimes such as drug dealing, domestic abuse and burglary were also on the rise.

Three-quarters (74 per cent) of those who live in rural areas believe crime has gone up during the past 12 months and 56 per cent of those who reported a crime were dissatisfied with the way it was handled by the police. Almost half (48 per cent) had installed crime prevention measures such as security lighting, alarms or CCTV to help ward off thieves.

The damning report is a particular blow to the Conservatives who have a high number of rural constituencies and portray themselves as the party of law and order. Neil Parish, the Tory MP for Tiverton in Devon and chairman of the Environment Select Committee, said: ‘It is deeply worrying to hear so many rural residents do not think it is worth reporting these kinds of incidents. We need to ensure that rural crime is not being underestimated by those in authority and treated with the same seriousness as in any other area.’

The Countryside Alliance is urging the Government to create a national rural crime taskforce and pump more money into sparsely populated areas to make sure they are better protected.

The survey was conducted in March before planned Police and Crime Commissioner elections. It found 57 per cent of people did not believe rural policing had improved since commissioners were introduced in 2012 to help give communities a greater say.

‘Rural crime needs to be treated more seriously’