Met better than other forces at crime cutting

The Met is leading other forces at cutting crime and improving efficiency, a study has found.

A Home Office report to be published tomorrow will praise Scotland Yard for bringing down burglary, robbery, car crime and the fear of crime.

It will also show how the Met is directing more resources to frontline policing while reducing staff sick leave.

The results mean Met Commissioner Sir John Stevens - who is widely acknowledged to have turned the force around after taking over in 2000 - can retire on a high note at the end of the year. His successor is due to be named next month.

The Home Office will unveil the findings in its performance assessment of all 43 forces in England and Wales for 2003/4.

It will not be published as a league table but London will be compared to similar big-city forces in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

It will show total recorded crime in the Met area is down

1.8 per cent in the year to April, compared to the previous 12 months. Burglary fell 7.1 per cent to a 29-year low, car crime fell 7.1 per cent, and street crime fell 4.2 per cent. Violent crime was up two per cent in London, but rose 14 per cent in the rest of England and Wales.

Fear of crime is down: 22 per cent of Londoners said they were very worried about violence, a fall of seven per cent.

The assessment is based only on crimes reported to police. The separate British Crime Survey, described by Government officials as the most accurate picture of crime, pointed to a 37 per cent rise in violent crime in London last year

The Met still has one of the worst clear-up rates in the country, with 85 per cent of all reported crimes undetected. But the overall detection rate is up one per cent on last year.

And Met police numbers are up from 25,400 officers in early 2002 to a record 30,200.