Sharp rise in shoplifting and weapons offences in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire needs dealing with says PCC

A police and crime panel met on July 16 to review PCC Darryl Preston’s draft annual report for 2024/25, which highlights progress that has been made in meeting objectives and will be published in the near future.

While the report notes a number of successes including improved call handling times and more visible policing, it also lists a number of crimes that are on the rise in the county since the previous year.

These include a nine per cent rise in anti-social behaviour incidents, seven per cent rise in theft, 17 per cent rise in possession of weapons offences and a 22 per cent increase in shoplifting.

Addressing the sharp rise in some of these offences, Mr Preston told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “I’ve asked the chief constable about this and there have been specific operations particularly to deal with shoplifting and other crimes.

“We need to have a robust policing response. We need to put it before the courts and look at orders.

“I’m realistic as well. We need to actually deal with some of the underlying causes. Quite often this will be around addictions et cetera.

“We need to be ensuring we’re doing something around that to stop these crimes from happening in the first place because, frankly, it’s costing retailers money and it’s us that end up having to pay for it.”

There have been improvements in call handling performance over the last 12 months in Cambridgeshire, with the response service of both 999 and 101 calls up from 79% to 94% and 78% to 93% respectively.

Mr Preston says the average 999 call answer time is now around two seconds, which is among the fastest nationally.

Improvements have also been seen in police response times, with the average response time reduced from 20 minutes to 16 minutes and a further reduction to 14 minutes in recent months.

Mr Preston said: “We have seen some significant improvements and I’m really keen they are maintained and improved where they need to be.

“I will continue to hold the chief constable to account both formally and informally.

“Of course, we’ll be getting a new chief constable soon as well so part of my early conversations will be around ensuring the way the public can contact the police is the best as possible.”

The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show that the number of crimes recorded in Peterborough for the year ending December 2024 was 22,574 – a reduction of seven per cent compared to the previous year.

However, there was an increase in the number of shoplifting offences (three per cent) and possession of weapon offences (10 per cent), following the county-wide trend.