London transport crime falls – except for these two serious offences
Londoners can feel slightly safer in the city, after new figures revealed crime on the capital's Tubes, trains and buses has fallen 12 per cent.
There were 1,300 fewer crimes in 2104/15 compared with the previous year – in fact, crime in London fell at a faster rate than the rest of the UK, which recorded an 8.2 per cent decline.
However, incidents of two of the most serious crimes on London's transport network – violent assaults and sex offences – increased.
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Transport police in the capital dealt with 178 more violent assaults than in the previous year, a rise of 8.6 per cent, a figure that was in line with a similar rise across the rest of the UK.
The number of sexual assaults reported to London's transport police increased 32.2 per cent, a greater rise than the rest of the country where the number of offences increased by 25 per cent.
The number of "line of route offences" – crimes which cause disruption to trains, such as trespassing – as well as theft of railway property were also up by around seven per cent in the capital, compared with a fall elsewhere. However, the actual number of those crimes increased by five and 14 per cent respectively.
Meanwhile, offences involving drugs, theft of passengers' property such as smartphones and bags, fraud – including fare-dodging – and other crimes declined at a greater rate than the rest of the UK.