Villagers lose faith in police amid sharp rise in crimes

Two thirds of farms and countryside businesses have fallen victim in the past year, survey reports

VILLAGERS are living in fear of crime as their faith in rural policing wavers, a report has found.

Just over a quarter – 27 per cent – of people living in rural areas have confidence in their local police to keep them safe, according to the National Rural Crime Survey. This is 11 per cent lower than the last survey recorded in 2015.

Fly-tipping, speeding in country lanes and the financial burden of keeping property secure all feature prominently in a list of concerns described by the authors as “stark and worrying”.

The report, titled Living on the Edge, also found a growing number of communities feeling “frustrated at the way crime, deprivation and vulnerability was hidden by a picture postcard view of the countryside”.

The National Rural Crime Network, which commissioned the survey, said crime and the fear of crime was most experienced by young people, families and farmers.

More than two thirds – 69 per cent – of farmers and rural-specific business owners have been the victim of crime over the past 12 months, it found.

Some of the more common concerns were issues such as fly-tipping and speeding, where the police have a shared responsibility along with local authorities and other agencies.

The proportion of people who mentioned fly-tipping as a concern had risen 6 per cent, and, while the proportion of those mentioning speeding had decreased, it remained one of the most mentioned problems of living in the countryside.

The survey of 20,000 people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland also found that many offences were going unreported, mainly because of a “lack of faith” that any action would be taken.

Julia Mulligan, the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, who chairs the network, said: “Crime is up, anger is up, frustration is up, trust is down, those rating the police as good is down.

“With 10.3 million people living in rural areas, these are trends we can no longer ignore.

“Every decision affecting national policing moving forwards, from funding to safety and security, has to be set against the findings of this report.

“This report needs to be listened to in the future, when decisions on funding are being made. We can no longer continue to see funding being sucked from rural areas to urban.”

The report had 10 recommendations, which included urging chief constables to change the way rural areas were policed, ensuring reporting of crimes was easier, and doing more to help rural businesses prevent crime.

The report found 57 per cent of people had seen evidence of fly-tipping and 32 per cent speeding.

Meanwhile, the financial strain of rural crime was shown to have increased 13 per cent from 2015, now costing business owners an average of £4,800.

This was made up of repairs to property, loss of earnings and the costs of upgraded security.

Compared with 2015, the number of crimes going unreported to the police was up by a third for residents and two thirds by businesses in rural communities, mainly because they did not feel the police and criminal justice system understood the issues or would do anything about them.

The research was carried out between April and June by an independent research company. In total, 20,252 responses were received.