Lib Dems call for legal duty for police to attend burglaries

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a legal right for burglary victims to be visited by a police officer.

Figures obtained by the party reveal more than 45,000 burglaries reported to 19 forces last year went unattended.

The Lib Dems said they showed a "postcode lottery", with officers failing to attend more than half of reported burglaries in some areas.

The government has previously said police should visit the scene of all residential burglaries.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman welcomed a pledge last October by all 43 forces in England and Wales to send an officer to investigate every burgled home.

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Figures obtained by the Lib Dems through Freedom of Information requests, covering 19 of the 39 forces in England, show that out of 119,190 reported burglaries last year, 45,233 were not attended by a police officer.

In some areas, more than one in two burglary reports were not attended, according to the figures.

The worst performing force out of those which responded was Bedfordshire, where officers failed to visit the scene of more than 60% of reported burglaries.

In contrast, in Cumbria around 20% of reported burglaries went unattended.

Across all the forces which provided figures, around 40% of burglaries did not result in an officer visiting the scene, while more than 70% of the cases were closed without a suspect being identified.

Bedfordshire Police said the latest Home Office data showed it had the third highest solved rate for domestic burglaries in England and Wales.

"We were one of the first police areas in the country to make sure specialist forensics staff attend all domestic burglaries, while we have recently changed our policy to ensure an officer from our burglary team attends every incident as well," the force's Assistant Chief Constable Sharn Basra said.

'Overstretched'

The Lib Dems are calling for a "Burglary Response Guarantee", under which all domestic burglaries would be attended by police and properly investigated.

They said there needed to be a return to "proper community policing", where officers had the time and resources required to prevent and solve crimes.

The party called on the home secretary to bring forward legislation to enshrine in law the right for burglary victims to be visited by an officer.

Otherwise, the Lib Dems said they would seek to add a guarantee to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which covers England and Wales and is currently making its way through Parliament.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said: "Everyone should be able to feel safe in their own homes. But this Conservative government has left our police forces overstretched and under-resourced, meaning far too many victims are let down while criminals are getting away with it."

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Both Labour and the Conservatives have also made tackling crime and anti-social behaviour a focus of their campaigning ahead of May's local elections in England and the next general election, which is expected next year.

Labour has pledged to recruit 13,000 more neighbourhood police officers to help boost local patrols.

In 2019, the government promised to hire 20,000 new police officers by the end of March this year.

Last week the Home Office said it was awaiting the final data, but remained confident it had delivered on the pledge.

In September, Home Secretary Ms Braverman wrote to every police force in England and Wales saying the public wanted to know an officer would visit them in the case of crimes like burglary.

However, Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs' Council, said some forces had struggled to attend all burglaries in the past because of "limited resources".