Transparency data

Police recorded knife-enabled robbery offences, to June 2025

Published 1 August 2025

Applies to England and Wales

The Home Office collects information on police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument (knife-enabled crime) in England and Wales for selected offences, including knife-enabled robbery (KER). KER includes offences where a knife or sharp instrument has been used to injure a victim or used as a threat. This will include offences where the weapon may not have been seen but is believed to be present at the time of the offence by the victim or another witness.

KER accounted for 42% of these knife-enabled offences in the year ending June 2024, with 22,995 KER offences recorded (28% of all robberies recorded this year). This was a 10% rise compared with the year ending June 2023.

The Home Secretary and Policing Minister launched a KER Taskforce, with the first meeting held in October 2024. The purpose of the Taskforce was to agree new operational police tactics to halt the rise in KER offence levels. The Taskforce was chaired by the Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention. It brought together Chief Constables in the 7 police force areas with the highest and/or rising levels of KER offences. These were: Metropolitan Police Service, Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, West Yorkshire Police, South Yorkshire Police, Avon and Somerset Police, and British Transport Police (England and Wales only). Collectively these forces accounted for 70% of KER in the year to June 2024.

The Taskforce was also attended by Mayors/Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in these 7 areas, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, College of Policing, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, as well as other Safer Streets Mission partners. The Taskforce agreed an ambition to halt the rise of KER in the Taskforce areas within 6 months, by March 2025, baselined to the year ending June 2024. The data in this release shows the progress made in this ambition.

The data shows:

• the Taskforce areas recorded 16,068 KER offences in the year to June 2024, a 14% rise compared with the previous year (14,111 offences in the year ending June 2023)

• in the official statistics published by the Office for National Statistics on 24 July 2025, the 7 Taskforce areas recorded 15,773 KER offences in the year to March 2025, a 2% fall compared to the year to June 2024 baseline (16,068 offences)

• the latest provisional management information, for the 12 months to June 2025, shows that there were 15,028 KER offences recorded by the police in the 7 Taskforce areas, a fall of 6% compared with the year to June 2024 baseline

Data notes

1. Police recorded knife or sharp instrument offences data is submitted via a special collection to the Home Office. The offences covered are attempted murder, threats to kill, assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm, robbery, rape and sexual assault. Figures for this ad hoc statistical release were supplied by the police by either by a manual return (West Midlands and British Transport Police) or via a record level extract supplied to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH; the other 5 forces). The forces who supplied data to the HODH used the National Data Quality Improvement Service (NDQIS) to aid identification of whether an offence included a knife or sharp instrument or not.
2. The offences involving a knife or sharp instrument (knife-enabled) collection includes offences where the weapon had been used to injure or threaten a victim. This will include offences where the weapon may not have been seen but is believed to be present at the time by the victim or another witness.
3. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes comprehensive statistics on knife-enabled crime for all police forces in their Crime in England and Wales quarterly releases: Crime in England and Wales -Office for National Statistics. Data for the year ending June 2025 for all forces will be published by the ONS on the 23 October 2025. In the comparison shown between the year ending March 2025 and the year ending June 2024, data for April to June 2024 is included in both the latest and the comparator year.
4. Monthly data provided in this release from July 2024 is provisional management information and therefore subject to revision. The Home Office reconciles knife-enabled crime data with the police on a quarterly basis ahead of the release of the official statistics published by the ONS. The management information in this release have not been reconciled and may have been extracted from force systems at a different date from the reconciled data. Data will, therefore, not match those published by the ONS.

Tables

Table 1: KER data for the 7 KER Taskforce forces and percentage changes

Police Force Area	Previous year (July 2022 to June 2023)	Baseline year (July 2023 to June 2024)	Percentage annual change at baseline	Latest data (June 2024 to June 2025)	Latest percentage change versus baseline
Metropolitan Police	7,992	9,723	+22%	9,514	-2%
West Midlands	2,520	2,558	+2%	1,922	-25%
Greater Manchester	1,346	1,288	-4%	1,345	+4%
West Yorkshire	799	891	+12%	828	-7%
Avon and Somerset	476	602	+26%	546	-9%
South Yorkshire	618	595	-4%	560	-6%
British Transport Police	360	411	+14%	313	-24%
Total	14,111	16,068	+14%	15,028	-6%

Source: Provisional management information, police recorded crime, Home Office

Table 2: KER Taskforce period – monthly data for the 7 KER Taskforce forces, to June 2025

Police Force Area	July 2024	August 2024	September 2024	October 2024	November 2024	December 2024	January 2025	February 2025	March 2025	April 2025	May 2025	June 2025	Total, last 12 months
Metropolitan Police	800	780	868	940	896	869	762	759	731	712	669	728	9,514
West Midlands	204	202	180	171	167	126	164	122	138	137	135	176	1,922
Greater Manchester	129	127	106	107	145	93	87	95	134	120	111	91	1,345
West Yorkshire	77	57	57	86	67	68	68	83	68	62	71	64	828
Avon and Somerset	39	61	54	53	43	33	39	32	47	35	43	67	546
South Yorkshire	39	62	36	35	54	45	42	45	55	57	39	51	560
British Transport	18	20	24	24	35	36	18	21	24	28	35	30	313
Total	1,306	1,309	1,325	1,416	1,407	1,270	1,180	1,157	1,197	1,151	1,103	1,207	15,028

Source: Provisional management information, police recorded crime, Home Office