RECORDED crime in Lancashire has risen by almost 25 per cent in the last year.

For the 12 months to the end of June 2018 compared to the 12 months to the end of June 2017, there has been an increase of 24.8 per cent in recorded crime.

Across England and Wales, there has been a 10 per cent increase in recorded crime, while the north west has seen a rise of 18.6 per cent.

Public order and violent crime feature as key issues according to the figures.

Lancashire has the greatest percentage increase (50.8 per cent, 32,338 to 48,776) when compared to similar forces.

The county has also experienced a significant increase in public order offences - a 166.6 per cent jump from 3,386 to 9,027.

The statistics will be discussed at a police and crime panel meeting later this week, where police and crime commissioner Clive Grunshaw will face questions.

A report to go before the panel states: “The increase in crime in Lancashire does not make Lancashire unique, in fact 41 other forces in the UK have also experienced increases in recorded crime.

“It is important to understand that whilst the recording of crime is increasing, crime itself is not going up by that amount, further, that the calls to the police are high, but are remaining fairly static.

“Police officers are deploying to around only 2 per cent more jobs than previously. However, the amount of recorded crimes that require investigation has risen massively and therefore has an impact on the finite resources available.”

Scott Keay [CORR], force data analytics and insight manager, said: "The significant increases lie within the lower levels of violence offence.

"In addition to increases in violence without injury there has been an increase in violence with injury offences.

"We would expect this. Just as improved recording has led to an increase in non-injury offences we would expect some migration from non-injury

into the lower end of the injury offences.

"An examination of the distribution across the county indicates an even spread, suggesting a single causation: i.e. recording practices not an increase in violence.

"These increases in public order and violent crime offences are in line with

expectations due to changes in recording practice following the CDI inspection.

"Each division now has a quality manager with a small team focussed on ensuring the accurate recording of crime, currently concentrating upon violence and sexual offences.

"As the teams have been in place since April we would expect the recording of crime to accelerate initially.

"Furthermore, recorded anti-social behaviour (ASB) incidents have continued to fall (down 11,280 or 14.9 per cent) in line with the increases above.

"This also supports the view that the increase in reported public order crime is a reflection of changed recording practices, in this case from high end ASB incidents to lower severity public order offences."