County has 2,000 sexual violence reports in a year

Roger Hirst said authorities must do more to tackle sexual violence

There were 2,171 rape and sexual assault cases reported in a year in one county, new data has shown.

The number of rape and sexual assault cases reported has gone up by 140% in Essex over the past eight years, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In 2015-16, 1,001 reports of rape and sexual assaults were made to police and in 2022-23 there were 2,420 cases reported, which is a 140% increase.

Data shows a 346% increase in the number of adult rape cases reaching crown courts across the country. The figure jumped from 624 to 2,786 between December 2019 and December 2023.

Roger Hirst, the newly elected police, fire and crime commissioner for Essex, said: "We have a new director of public prosecutions – I have already spoken with him twice about this particular issue.

“We need to be prosecuting more people. At the moment we prosecute when we and the CPS are absolutely sure we have a case which will succeed."

The BBC has contacted the CPS for comment.