Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2024 to 2025

Question 1

Overview of crime outcomes recorded in the year to March 2025, England and Wales

Accepted Answer

This bulletin reports on investigative outcomes that police forces have assigned to notifiable offences recorded in England and Wales between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. Findings are presented separately for:

victim-based offences in Section 2 and non-victim-based offences in Section 3 (see Section 1.3 for definitions)
offences involving a firearm and offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in Section 4 (new for this publication)
fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences in Section 5

Headline findings

The new data on offences involving the use of a weapon showed relatively high charge/summons rates when compared to the equivalent offences that did not involve the use of a weapon. This may reflect the serious nature of these offences, meaning offenders are more likely to be charged/summonsed.

around 1 in 9 (12.0%) of offences involving a firearm were closed with a charge/summons outcome by year-end, which was higher than the proportion of offences not involving a firearm (7.3%)
lethal-barrelled firearms offences were more likely to be closed with a charge/summons outcome by year-end than non-lethal-barrelled firearms offences (13.3% of lethal-barrelled offences compared with 10.4% of other offences)
the proportion of knife-enabled offences which were closed with a charge/summons outcome by year-end was in line with that for firearms offences, also at around 1 in 9 (11.5%), and, similarly, this was higher when compared with offences not involving a knife (6.7%)

See Section 4 for more detailed findings on outcomes assigned to weapons offences.

Offences involving a firearm and offences involving a knife or sharp instrument are not distinct offence categories, rather a subset of other offence categories and are also included in the figures reported in Section 2 and Section 3, on victim-based and non-victim-based offences respectively. Non-victim-based offences are also often described as ‘state-based’, or ‘other crimes against society’ in other crime and justice statistics publications (more detailed definitions can be found in Section 1.3). For the year ending March 2025, both groups of offences showed similar findings to those reported in previous years. In general, figures are fairly stable from year to year. It is only when reflecting on long-term trends that we can see changes.

the proportion of victim-based offences resulting in a charge/summons outcome showed a long-term downward trend between the year ending March 2016 and year ending March 2022 (from 11.1% to 4.6%) but figures since then have started to increase, with the latest year’s figure rising to 6.3%, up from 5.5% the previous year
the proportion of non-victim-based offences resulting in a charge/summons outcome had also previously followed a long-term downward trend, falling from 28.8% in the year ending March 2016 to 10.3% in the year ending March 2023, followed by 2 consecutive rises, to 11.4% in the year ending March 2024 and 12.4% in the latest year

The likelihood of the police being able to close a case with a charge/summons outcome varies greatly by offence type, as does the average time take to assign an outcome, depending on the complexity of the different crime types for investigation. Key findings from the victim-based offences were:

as seen in previous years, sexual offences, which includes rape offences, were more likely to be closed due to evidential difficulties than other offence types (44.3% and 47.5% respectively were closed with these outcomes); though these proportions were both slightly lower than last year (47.6% and 52.8% respectively for year ending March 2024)
also, as in previous years, rape offences assigned a charge/summons outcome took the longest time to investigate (an average of 434 days compared with 57 days for violence against the person offences and 29 days for theft offences) and were thus less likely to result in a charge/summons at the year-end (2.8% of offences), but we would expect a continued increase in this charge/summons rate in subsequent quarters as more cases are finalised
again, in line with previous years, the most common reason for closing a victim-based offence was that no suspect had been identified (42.1% of cases were closed this way, a slight fall from 43.1% the previous year); this figure was highest for theft offences, with 70.8% of cases being closed this way
for robbery offences assigned a charge/summons outcome, these took slightly longer to investigate, on average, in the year ending March 2025 than in the previous year (67 days and 54 days respectively); this likely reflects the increasing volumes of harges, among other factors

See Section 2 for more detailed findings on outcomes assigned to victim-based offences.

For non-victim-based offences, the key findings were:

nearly 4 in 10 (37.2%) were closed due to evidential difficulties, while 22.3% were closed due to no suspect having been identified, 11.0% were assigned an out-of-court disposal and 10.9% remained under investigation (compared with 38.0%, 24.2%, 10.2% and 10.2% respectively for the previous year)
overall, an average (median) of 19 days was taken between the date the crime was recorded and the day the outcome was assigned, a decrease of one day compared with the previous year; charge/summons outcomes took slightly longer to assign, on average, at 47 days (up from 46 the previous year)
drug offences also showed a slight increase in time taken to assign a charge/summons outcome, on average, up from 61 days last year to 62 days in the year ending March 2025, as did possession of weapons offences, which were up from 21 days last year to 22 days in the latest year
in contrast, public order offences were assigned a charge/summons outcome within a shorter timeframe than in the previous year (down from 41 days to 36 days)

See Section 3 for more detailed findings on outcomes assigned to non-victim-based offences.

Data for fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences is provided by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) as these offences are recorded centrally. Fraud and CMA offences are presented separately as they differ in their nature and investigation and the reporting of outcomes differ to those relating to other crime types as they are based on the number of outcomes recorded within a year regardless of when the offence occurred (see Section 1.8).

The data for the year ending March 2025 showed:

there was a large increase of 87% in the number of fraud and CMA offences referred to the police for investigation compared with the previous year, largely driven by fraud (up 104%), though there was a decrease in the number of CMA offences referred for investigation (down 35%)
for outcomes recorded in the year ending March 2025, there was an increase for fraud offences (up 3%) while there was a decrease for CMA offences (down 36%)

See Section 5 for more detailed findings on outcomes assigned to fraud and CMA offences.

Question 2

1.  Introduction

Accepted Answer

1.1 Overview

This bulletin reports on investigative case outcomes that have beenassigned to notifiable offences recorded by the territorial police forces in England and Wales. It covers all territorial police forces, and British Transport Police (BTP).

In April 2013, the Home Office introduced the current crime outcomes framework, replacing a more narrow-focused one based on ‘detections’ (see Technical annex for further information).

As well as this annual publication, the Home Office also publishes quarterly outcomes tables, without commentary. These are published in the Crime outcomes in England and Wales statistics collection.

Aggregated crime and crime outcomes data is also published alongside justice outcomes data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the Criminal Justice System Delivery Data Dashboard. For more detailed background on the outcomes framework and how it was developed, see Annex A6 of the Technical annex.

1.2 Data issues

In Section 2 and Section 3, when comparing trends to previous years, figures for the year ending March 2024 exclude Devon & Cornwall, as figures were not available when published in July 2024.

The above issues do not impact on commentary in Section 5 as data on fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences is provided separately to those for other offence types (see Section 5 for further information).

1.3 Victim-based and non-victim-based offences

Earlier publications included separate sections on trends in crime outcomes and timeliness of assigning outcomes. Since last year, the 2 sets of commentary have been merged to present the overall narrative more clearly. Chapters are split to report on findings for victim-based and non-victim-based offences separately, as types and timeliness of outcomes assigned naturally differ between these 2 broad offence categories:

victim-based – crimes which are reported by an individual victim, business or other organisation; these comprise violence against the person, sexual offences, theft, robbery, and criminal damage and arson
non-victim-based – crimes which do not have a direct individual victim but are instead committed against society; an offender may have already been apprehended at the time of recording the offence (for example, an offender in possession of drugs); these comprise public disorder, drug offences, possession of weapons and other items, handling stolen goods and other miscellaneous offences committed against the state

How crimes are resolved varies considerably by the type of crime and reflects a range of factors including: the nature of the offence and the varying challenges in gathering evidence. For example, it will generally be far more difficult to identify a suspect for a criminal damage offence that was not witnessed or caught on CCTV, than one where such evidence is available.

In contrast, for some crimes, such as drug possession offences, the police may apprehend the offender at the time the crime comes to their attention, making a formal or informal criminal justice sanction much easier to achieve (formal and informal criminal justice sanctions consist of the following outcomes: Charged/Summonsed (outcome 1), Taken into consideration (outcomes 4), Out-of-court formal (outcomes 2, 3 and 6) and Out-of-court informal (outcomes 7 and 8)). Similarly, for an offence where substantial forensic evidence exists, it will be easier to proceed to a charge than for one where such evidence does not exist. The willingness of victims or witnesses to engage with the police can also vary by type of offence and the relationship between the victim and the offender. Fear and vulnerability of the victim are often key factors.

1.4 The full outcomes framework

Since its introduction in April 2014, the framework has developed to cover a broader range of outcome types for police forces to use. Detailed descriptions of each outcome type can be found in the Technical annex.

The main recorded crime data presented in this report provide a snapshot, at the time of analysis, of the current case status of offences recorded during the year ending March 2025.

The outcomes of some cases, especially those recorded towards the end of the financial year, may be subsequently revised once investigations have been completed, or new lines of enquiry have been opened. While all crimes will eventually have an outcome, this may take considerable time for some offences, particularly so for rape, sexual offences and other complex investigations.

At any given point, police forces will be undertaking crime investigations to which they will not yet have assigned a final outcome. Police forces will therefore submit revised data to the Home Office as investigations are completed and some data previously published will be revised in subsequent releases.

As such, for those offences where there are a significant volume of investigations still open, the data (as first published) does not present a complete picture of police performance. This is illustrated in Figure 2.7 with the case of rape offences where the proportion of investigations resulting in a suspect being charged rises over time and also in a new data table, Table 2.5, showing the progression of cases, from their status as first published, alongside this release to allow users to view this at offence group level.

It is currently not possible to provide this information for fraud and CMA offences as the data provided by National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) reflect outcomes recorded in the year, which may relate to offences recorded in previous years. It is not possible to track the progression of fraud and CMA offences over time.

1.5 Outcome groupings in this bulletin

Some of the tables and charts in this bulletin show grouped outcomes to simplify presentation. For transparency, open data tables are also published that show the full range of police outcomes. These are accessible from the Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables.

For statistical purposes, all recorded crimes are assigned one outcome type. Please refer to the Home Office Counting Rules for information on recording outcomes.

Table 1.1 shows the grouping of outcomes used in this report. These were structured taking into account user feedback following a consultation in 2014.

Table 1.1: Grouping the outcomes framework from April 2013 onwards (outcomes one to 22)

Outcome Group	Outcome Types
Charged/summonsed	1
of which the outcome relates to an alternative offence to that recorded (from April 2016)	1a
Taken into consideration	4
Out-of-court (formal)	2, 3, 6
of which the outcome relates to an alternative offence to that recorded (from April 2016)	2a, 3a
Out-of-court (informal)	7, 8
Prosecution prevented or not in the public interest	5, 9, 10,11, 12, 13, 17
Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action)	15
Evidential difficulties (victim does not support action)	14, 16
Investigation complete – no suspect identified	18
NFIB - Fraud case	19
Action undertaken by another body/agency (from April 2015)	20
Further investigation to support formal action not in the public interest (police decision) (from January 2016)	21
Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action (voluntary from April 2019)	22

Notes:

Outcome 19 applies to fraud offences recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau only, which are reported on separately in Section 5.

See Section 6 of the Technical annex for detailed descriptions of each outcome type.

Data on outcomes 1a, 2a and 3a have been included in open data and summary tables since late 2023, following quality assurance checks by Home Office analysts which deemed the data for publication.

1.6 Future changes to the outcomes framework

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2023 proposes to introduce a simplified, strengthened 2-tier out-of-court-disposal (OOCD) framework of 2 new cautions to apply to offenders aged 18 and over. The Diversionary Caution (upper tier) and Community Caution (lower tier) will replace the previous mix of OOCDs with a tougher, more consistent framework of out of court sanctions across England and Wales. As part of this change, the use of penalty notices for disorder (PND) and Cannabis/Khat Warnings are potentially to be discontinued. Police will still be able to use community resolutions.

In addition to the above, there has been growing demand from users of these statistics for us to combine outcomes into broader categories to inform the judgement of police performance. As we finalise these proposals, we will consult with users before introducing changes to the presentation of future statistics.

1.7 Supplementary data tables

The chapters in this bulletin discuss key topics of interest related to the outcomes data. Data presented in these chapters, as both charts and tables, is available online via the bulletin tables published on the GOV.UK website.

In addition to the tables found in the main bulletin, a number of supplementary tables are available here, which provide additional data on the topics discussed, plus data on areas not covered. Alongside the outcomes data, data on transferred and cancelled records are also published.

1.8 Outcomes for offences that were recorded in the reporting period

This is the principal method used to present outcomes data in Section 2 and Section 3 of this bulletin; it looks at outcomes for offences recorded in the reporting period (previously referred to as ‘Outcomes for offences recorded in quarter’ in linked data tables) in which the offence was recorded. It allows the distribution of outcomes to be shown for individual crimes that were recorded in the reporting period. At first publication, as some investigations are ongoing, there will be crimes which do not yet have an assigned outcome. As investigations close, outcomes will be finalised and revised in subsequent quarterly data tables.

It is not possible to present outcomes data for fraud and computer misuse offences in this format, as the data provided by the NFIB cannot be linked to offences (for more information, Sections 5).

1.9 Outcomes for investigations closed in the reporting period

This measure relates to outcomes to investigations closed in a particular reporting period (such as a calendar quarter or year) regardless of when the associated crime was recorded (previously referred to as ‘Outcomes recorded in quarter’). As such, it will include outcomes for cases initially recorded in a previous year. It is the method applied to fraud data (for more information, Sections 5 ). Ratios can be calculated showing the number of outcomes recorded in the year as a proportion of all crimes recorded in the same year. This is how rates were presented before it was possible to link individual crimes with their outcomes.

This approach provides a fuller measure of police activity in relation to crime in a given year. However, comparing the number of outcomes with the number of recorded offences in this way should be done with caution, since rates could appear to change from one year simply because of a shifting balance between crimes and outcomes recorded over time. For example, some crime types could show a rate of over 100 per cent against a particular outcome, which is sometimes the case for relatively low volume crimes.

1.10 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

In response to feedback from users, data on outcomes assigned to alternative offences were first published in the year to June 2023 data tables. This is the first time findings for these outcome types have been reported in the commentary.

The Home Office Counting Rules require the police to record offences based on the crime that has been committed. However, sometimes the police or Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) may decide to charge a defendant with an alternative offence. This is much more common for victim-based offences than non-victim-based offences. Approximately 11.4% of all charge outcomes recorded for victim-based offences in the year ending March 2025 were for an alternative offence, compared with 5.1% for non-victim-based offences. From the data held centrally by the Home Office, it is not possible to identify the specific alternative offence that has been charged.

1.11 Updates for fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) statistics

Following the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) review of fraud and CMA statistics, published in April 2025, the Home Office is working with the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), Action Fraud, Cifas and His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS), to deliver on the actions highlighted in their recommendations, with an Action Plan scheduled for publication by ONS in late December 2025. While the recommendations focus on improvements to recorded crime statistics, published by ONS, it is anticipated that development of the NFIB’s fraud reporting and analysis systems will also lead to improvements in the quality of fraud referrals and outcomes statistics.

Additionally, the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) for fraud and CMA offences are currently under review and changes will be dependent on the progress of a replacement system for Action Fraud. This is expected to lead to changes in some of the existing offence categories as new crimes and scams are identified and existing ones are retired

Question 3

2.  Victim-based offences

Accepted Answer

This chapter presents data on the outcomes of police investigations assigned to notifiable victim-based crimes recorded in England and Wales over the 12-month period to March 2025.

Victim-based crimes are offences committed directly against individuals, businesses, or other organisations. These differ from non-victim-based crimes in both the nature and the distribution of the investigative outcomes. Victim-based offences can present more challenges in evidence collection and often require more time to investigate.

Given these differences, this report treats the 2 categories separately. This section focuses on victim-based offences, while Section 3 covers non-victim-based crimes (see Section 1.3 for an overview). Victim-based offences include; violence against the person, sexual offences, theft, robbery, and criminal damage and arson.

Data from Devon & Cornwall Police for the year ending March 2024 was unavailable. Additionally, data presented for previously published figures may include revisions where new or additional data has become available. Fraud and Computer Misuse Act offences, which are recorded centrally, are excluded from this chapter (see Section 5).

Key findings

This section presents the key findings on the outcomes assigned by police forces to notifiable victim-based offences recorded in England and Wales.

in the 12 months to March 2025, around 4.5 million victim-based offences were recorded by the police, a decrease of 2% compared with 4.6 million in the previous year; at the year-end, 7.9% were still under investigation, a similar proportion to last year
despite the fall in the offence levels, the volume of charge/summons outcomes assigned in the 12-month period to March 2025 increased by 14.9% (up from 303,556 to 348,910)
between the year ending March 2016 and year ending March 2022, the proportion of victim-based crimes resulting in a charge/summons steadily declined (from 11.1% to 4.6%); however, in recent years the trend has reversed, with the latest year’s figure rising to 6.3% up from 5.5% the previous year
the percentage of offences recorded in the year to March 2025 resulting in a charge/summons outcome rose across almost all offence types, except for sexual offences which remained the same, at 4.2%; theft offences saw the biggest increase when compared with last year (up from 5.8% to 7.3%)
a higher-than-average proportion of sexual offences, which include rape offences, were assigned to one of the evidential difficulties’ categories (44.3% for sexual offences and 47.5% for rape offences), when compared with other crime types (37.9% for all victim-based offences); however, these were slightly lower than the levels reported last year (47.6% for sexual offences and 52.8% for rape offences)
the most common reason for victim-based offences being closed remained no suspect having been identified, with 42.1% of cases closed this way in the year ending March 2025; a similar proportion to that recorded the previous year (43.1%); this figure was highest for theft offences, with 70.8% of cases being closed this way

Figure 2.1: Proportion of victim-based offences resulting in a charge and/or summons or evidential difficulties outcome, or no suspect identified outcome, year ending March 2016 to year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 1.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences, which are reported in Section 5. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than by police forces.
Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 43 forces (including British Transport Police). The data excludes Greater Manchester Police (GMP) from July 2019 to March 2020. Following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, GMP has been unable to supply data for this period.

For all victim-based offences where the investigation resulted in a charge/summons, the average number of days taken to reach this outcome increased by one day to a (median) average of 41 days in the last 12-month period. However, as previously found, the length of time it took police forces to assign an investigative outcome for a victim-based crime varied by both the type of offence and the type of outcome:

there was an increase of 13 days in the average number of days to assign a charge/summons outcome for robbery offences (up from 54 to 67 days); there are likely to be a range of factors behind the rise, including reflecting the increasing volumes of charges for this crime type
for sexual offences, including rape and other sexual offences, the time to reach a charge/summons decision was similar to that reported last year, (273 days last year and 275 days in the current reporting period); however within this category, rape offences took on average 11 days longer for investigations to reach a charge/summons outcome (from 423 to 434 days in the current year)
criminal damage and arson offences took on average 31 days for a charge/summons decision to be reached, no change compared with last year

Table 2.1: The average (median) length of time taken to assign an outcome between the year ending March 2019 and the year ending March 2025, by offence type, England and Wales

	Year ending March 2019	Year ending March 2020	Year ending March 2021	Year ending March 2022	Year ending March 2023	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2025
Violence against the person	18	18	18	21	23	22	22
Sexual offences	77	66	69	62	72	68	65
of which: Rape	126	98	97	94	104	107	103
Robbery	24	28	42	46	65	42	35
Theft offences	2	4	3	3	4	6	8
of which: Residential burglary	5	6	7	10	16	17	18
of which: Shoplifting	7	7	7	6	6	7	10
Criminal damage and arson	3	4	4	5	6	6	8

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH),Table 3.1, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Median days for the year ending March 2020 to the year ending March 2023 are as first published.
Only includes data for forces who send record-level data to HODH.

2.1 Variation in outcomes by offence group

As in previous years, the way crimes were resolved continues to vary considerably depending on the offence type. This variation reflects a combination of factors, including the nature of the crime, differing police priorities, and the challenges associated with gathering evidence. For instance, identifying a suspect in a criminal damage case is generally far more difficult when the incident is neither witnessed nor captured on CCTV, compared with cases where such intelligence is available. In contact crimes, such as violence or sexual offences, the police are much more likely to be able to identify the suspect than in non-contact crimes, such as criminal damage and many types of theft.

In contrast, for certain crimes, such as shoplifting offences, the police may have apprehended the offender at the time the crime came to their attention, making it much easier to achieve a formal or informal criminal justice sanction. Similarly, when substantial forensic evidence is available, progressing to a charge is typically easier than in cases where such evidence does not exist. Additionally, the willingness of victims or witnesses to engage with the police can vary depending on the type of offence and the nature of the relationship between the victim and the offender.

These factors may also subsequently impact on the length of time needed to complete an investigation and on the distribution of outcomes. For example, a fairly large proportion of sexual offences recorded in a year will remain under investigation in the subsequent year. Almost a third (32.3%) of sexual offences recorded in the year ending March 2025 had not yet been assigned an outcome at the end of the year compared with 26.6% last year. Where investigations into sexual offences are closed, just over 4 in 10 offences were due to evidential difficulties (44.3% for the year ending March 2025, slightly down from 47.6% the previous year). This reflects challenges associated with investigating such crimes, such as those related to evidence and/or support of the victim. The variation in outcomes across offence groups is illustrated by the differences in the 6 offence types selected to highlight such variation in Figure 2.2 (a more detailed offence breakdown can be found in Table 2.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, data tables).

Figure 2.2: Proportion of outcomes assigned by outcome group and offence group for offences that were recorded in the year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 2.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than by the police forces.
Evidential difficulties include evidential difficulties where the suspect was/was not identified, and the victim does not support further action.
The outcome group ‘other’ includes all other outcomes presented under the ‘Outcomes framework – April 2014 onwards’ in the Technical Annex.
Based on data from 43 territorial police forces and the British Transport Police.

2.2 Violence against the person

This is a broad offence group covering a wide spectrum of physical violence, from homicide and serious violent crime through to lower harm and less serious common assault. It also includes offences involving psychological or emotional (rather than physical) abuse, such as harassment and stalking. The nature and circumstances of violent offences can also vary considerably, which impacts the distribution of outcomes.

Within violence against the person offences, there is a significant difference between domestic abuse and non-domestic abuse offences. In the former, the victim/suspect relationship is known, whereas other violence can involve strangers and be committed in public rather than private spaces. While the suspect may be known, victims may be wary of supporting prosecution and evidence is more contested. On the other hand, domestic abuse offences tend to be seen as a higher priority but can take longer to investigate, therefore there is more scope for victim withdrawal. In the regular quarterly crime statistics tables published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS; July 2025), typically around a third (32.7%) of violence against the person offences are flagged as domestic abuse related.

Around 4 in 10 (42.5%) of all violence against the person offences recorded in the 12-month period to March 2025 were closed because victims did not support police action - a proportion similar to the 41.9% reported in the previous year. In addition, published data from ONS on domestic abuse and the criminal justice system (ONS, November 2024) showed that, in the year ending March 2024, over half (56.2%) of domestic-abuse related crimes were closed due to evidential difficulties where the victim did not support further action. In contrast, this was the case for just over a third of the non-domestic-abuse related crimes (36.2%).

In the year ending March 2024, the charge rate for domestic abuse-related crimes was slightly higher (7.0%) compared with the charge rate for non-domestic abuse-related crimes (6.2%). For both, domestic and non-domestic abuse related violence against the person offences, the percentage of cases closed with an outcome of ‘charged or summonsed’ was higher compared with the previous year (6.3% and 4.9%, respectively), though still somewhat lower than in the year ending March 2019, when the data was first published. In that year, 11.3% of the recorded domestic abuse violence against the person crimes closed with a charge/summons and 8.0% of those that were non-domestic abuse related.

Due to the nature of the victim-offender relationship, domestic abuse-related violence against the person offences were less likely to be closed because no suspect was identified (1.8%) compared with non-domestic abuse-related violence against the person crimes (23.2%). Both rates were similar to those published in the previous year (1.2% and 20.2% respectively).

Outcomes within this offence group varied depending on the type of crime. The charge/summons rate for violence with injury offences was slightly higher than that for violence without injury (just under 8.0% compared with 6.3%). This difference was largely due to a greater proportion of victims of violence without injury not supporting police action (44.9% compared with 40.6% for violence with injury). In contrast, there was a much higher charge/summons rate for homicide offences, with just over half of the cases closed with this outcome (55.9%), a slight increase compared with the year before (54.8%). Homicide offences can take a relatively long time to investigate and for an outcome to be assigned. For example, for homicides recorded in the 12 months period to March 2022, around 38.3% of the offences were still under investigation - a proportion similar to that for the latest year (39.1%). However, the latest updated figures for that year show the percentage of the offences without an outcome went down to 6.6% as more crimes were closed following an investigation. Similarly, the charge rate went from 54.8% when first published in July 2022 to 73.1%.

Generally, most of the stalking and harassment offences were closed due to evidential difficulties (65.2%), with around two-thirds of these (accounting for 41.2% of all stalking and harassment offences) closed due to victims not supporting police action, a level similar to that seen in the previous year (41.1%). The charge rate for these offences was slightly higher (4.1%) than last year’s (3.6%).

For violence against the person offences, there was no change in the average number of days for an outcome to be assigned compared with the previous year (22 days for both years). This has been gradually increasing since the year ending March 2018, when it stood at 15 days, with a peak at 23 days in the year ending March 2023. This is likely to be due to a combination of factors, including a rise in caseloads following better identification of these offences and more priority being given to deliver improved outcomes.

The overall increase in average days to outcome was influenced by out-of-court disposals, with an increase of 13 days in the year ending March 2025 compared with the previous year (up from 40 to 53 days).

Figure 2.3: The time taken (median days) for outcomes to be assigned to offences, by offence group, year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Figure 2.4: The time taken (median days) for charge/summons outcomes to be assigned to offences, by offence group, year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

2.3 Sexual offences

Sexual offences, including rape (covered in Section 2.4) and other sexual offences, had the highest proportion of investigations still open and without an assigned outcome at the year-end (32.3%). This was largely due to the greater complexity and extended time required to investigate such offences compared with other crime types. This also impacts on the distribution of other outcomes and contributes to the apparently low charge/summons rate for the year when the data is first published.

The proportion of sexual offences resulting in a charge or summons outcome by year-end remained similar to the previous year (4.2%). However, this figure was higher than those recorded in earlier years: 3.6% in the year ending March 2023, 2.9% in the year ending March 2022, 3.5% in the year ending March 2021, and 3.2% in the year ending March 2020. We expect the charge/summons rate to increase as more crimes are closed following an investigation. For example, for sexual offences recorded in the year ending March 2024 the rate increased from 4.2% when first published in July 2024 to 6.9% in the latest figures (see Figure 2.5 for further years).

Figure 2.5: Proportion of sexual offences recorded in the years ending March 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 and assigned a ‘Charged/Summonsed’ outcome, as when first published compared with subsequent updates, England and Wales ^1,2

Chart inspired by presentation of outcomes data by Gavin Hales from London Metropolitan University, 2024. See Operation Soteria – Transforming the Investigation of Rape (npcc.police.uk) for further information on the progress of Operation Soteria work.

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 1.6, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Figures for the year ending March 2020 exclude Greater Manchester police (GMP) as they were unable to provide full data to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) in this period.
Figures for the year ending March 2022 exclude Devon & Cornwall police as they were unable to provide full data to the HODH in this period.

A higher-than-average proportion of cases were assigned to one of the evidential difficulties categories when compared with other crime types. For example, around a third of cases of sexual offences (31.0%) were closed because the victim did not support further police action against a suspect, slightly lower than in the previous year (33.0%). Conversely, given the nature of the crime, sexual offences had a much lower level of suspects not identified (12.3%), compared with the overall rate of 42.1% for all victim-based offences combined.

As with charge rates, we expect the proportion of cases with an outcome of evidential difficulties to rise as more investigations are closed. For example, for sexual offences recorded in the year ending March 2024, 47.6% of cases were initially assigned an evidential difficulties outcome (when first published in July 2024), but this has now increased to 58.4% (in the latest published figures).

As in previous years, sexual offences took longer to assign an outcome than any other crime types. Around 39% of these offences were closed after more than 100 days – down from 42% in year ending March 2024. This was reflected in the average number of days to assign an outcome which, although still high, decreased to 65 days, down from 68 days in the previous year.

Figure 2.6: The time taken (median days) for sexual offences to be assigned an outcome, by outcome type, years ending March 2024 and 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 3.3, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

2.4 Rape offences

In the year ending March 2025, rape offences accounted for 34.2% of all sexual offences, which is slightly lower than in the previous year (35.9%). The proportion of rape offences assigned a charged/summonsed outcome rose very slightly from 2.6% (1,733 charge/summonses) in the previous year to 2.8% in the latest one (2,040 charge/summonses). This charge/summons rate will increase as more crimes are closed following an investigation and will be apparent in subsequent quarterly data releases. For example, for the year ending March 2024, the rate increased from 2.6% when first published in July 2024, to 4.6% in the latest-released figures. Trends for further years can be seen in Figure 2.7.

Figure: 2.7 Proportion of rape offences assigned a ‘charge/summons’ outcome, recorded in the years ending March 2020, 2021, 2022, as when first published compared with subsequent updates, England and Wales ^1,2

Chart inspired by presentation of outcomes data by Gavin Hales from London Metropolitan University, 2024. See Operation Soteria – Transforming the Investigation of Rape (npcc.police.uk) for further information on the progress of Operation Soteria work.

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Figures for the year ending March 2020 exclude Greater Manchester police (GMP) as they were unable to provide full data to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) in this period.
Figures for the year ending March 2022 exclude Devon & Cornwall police as they were unable to provide full data to the HODH in this period.
The outcomes open data tables for March 2020 were last updated in July 2023.

Rape offences saw an increase of 11 days in the time taken to charge/summons, from 423 days to 434 days. Around half (51%) of investigations into rape closed after 100 days, a slight decrease compared with the year ending March 2024, where the equivalent proportion was 54%. Though the average number of days taken to assign a charge/summons outcome to rape offences has always been high due to the complex nature of these cases, it was previously lower than it has been in recent years (for example, in the year ending March 2016, the equivalent figure was 243 days).

Around 47.5% of rape offences were assigned an evidential difficulties outcome (a lower level than last year, at 52.8%). Although there has been a concerted effort to improve the investigative performance for rape offences, these offences remain challenging to investigate. We expect the number of cases closed with evidential difficulties to rise as more outcomes are assigned. For the year ending March 2024, 52.8% of rape offences were assigned an evidential difficulties outcome (when published in July 2024) and this increased to 68.6% (when published in July 2025).

The average time taken to assign the ‘Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action)’ outcome for rape offences decreased by 2 days, down to 246 days compared with the previous year. The average time taken to assign the ‘Evidential difficulties (victim does not support action)’ outcome for rape offences decreased by 13 days, down to 71 days across the same period.

2.5 Theft offences

The overall category of theft comprises a large range of different types of acquisitive crime and, in this section, we focus on several of the key sub-categories of interest. More detailed breakdowns for all theft offences can be found in the Outcomes open data tables.

The distribution of outcomes for residential burglary offences largely followed those seen for all theft offences, with 73.1% of offences closed in the year ending March 2025 due to no suspect having been identified (a similar level to 73.3% in the previous year). Table 3.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

The charge rates for residential burglary offences recorded in the year ending March 2025 were similar to those recorded in the year ending March 2024 (4.7% and 4.3% respectively). Within this category, the charge rate for home burglary offences was higher for both the year ending March 2025 and the year ending March 2024 (at 5.5% and 5.0% respectively), whereas the charge rate for burglaries of an unconnected building was lower (2.1% and 2.2% respectively). These categories were introduced in April 2023 following the National Police Chefs’ Council (NPCC) commitment for the police to attend all home burglaries.

Similarly, non-residential burglary offences showed a slight increase in the charge/summons outcomes (up from 7.9% in the year ending March 2024, to 8.9% in the year ending March 2025). As with the general trend of theft offences, around two-thirds of offences (69.6%) were closed with no suspect having been identified in the year ending March 2025 (no change when compared with the previous year).

For residential burglary offences, police forces took on average 18 days to close an outcome in the year ending March 2025, a one-day increase compared with the previous year. Within this category, the days to outcome for home burglary was higher (22 days on average), than for burglaries of an unconnected building (6 days on average). The median days taken to assign an ‘Investigation complete - no suspect identified’ outcome for residential burglary offences was 13 days during the year ending March 2025, which is also the same as the previous year. The average number of days to assign a charge/summons outcome for residential burglary offences increased by 9 days (from 47 to 56 days) when compared with the previous year. The average days to charge/summons for home burglary offences was 47 days in year to March 2025.

Vehicle theft comprises 3 broad categories (theft from a vehicle, theft of a motor vehicle, and vehicle interference). The majority of vehicle offences were closed in the year ending March 2025 with no suspect having been identified (83.9%), a similar level to the previous year (83.8%). The charge rates were also similar compared with the year ending March 2024 (at 2.4% and 2.2% respectively).

Around half of shoplifting offences were closed in the year ending March 2025 due to no suspect having been identified (55.3%, a similar level to 55.8% in the year ending March 2024).

Charge rates for shoplifting offences were higher than for other theft offences on average (18.5% and 2.5% respectively), which could be the result of more accessible evidence, for example, CCTV within the shop or the offender being detained on the premises. This was a 2-percentage point rise from 16.4% in the year ending March 2024. Shoplifting offences also received a higher proportion of out-of-court (formal) disposals (such as Cautions and Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs)), compared with other theft offences, at 0.6% (compared with vehicle offences, theft from the person, and residential burglary, all at 0.1% in the year ending March 2025). Around 16.8% of shoplifting cases were assigned an evidential difficulties outcome, slightly lower than in the previous year (18.1%).

The median days taken to assign an outcome for shoplifting offences increased by 3 days, from 7 to 10 days in the year ending March 2025 compared with the previous year.

2.6 Robbery

Police recorded robbery offences decreased by 2.7% compared with the previous year. This headline figure concealed different trends for personal and business robbery. The latest figures for personal robbery fell by 10.5%, whereas business robbery was up by 50.2%. This is a large increase from a relatively small base (up from 10,332 to 15,520 offences). However, overall robbery remains below the pre-pandemic level (12.6% lower than in the year ending March 2020). The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) records a disproportionate number of robbery offences (43% of all those recorded in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025), and trends in this police force area tend to impact on the national picture).

The median days taken to close an investigation of robbery had been increasing steadily since the year ending March 2018, from around 23 days to 65 days during the year ending March 2023. However, the last 2 years saw consecutive decreases, down to 42 days in the year ending March 2024 and to 35 days in the year ending March 2025. However, half of robbery offences (52.2%) were closed in the year ending March 2025 due to no suspect having been identified (compared with 50.3% in the year ending March 2024). Around 2 in 10 robbery offences were closed due to evidential difficulties where the victim did not support further action (21.8%, slightly higher than 20.9% in the previous year).

The proportion of robbery offences resolved with a charge/summons outcome increased by around 1 percentage point to 7.5%. However, the time taken to reach a charge/summons decision in the year ending March 2025 was slower than in the previous year, with the average up to 67 days, an increase of 13 days when compared with the previous year. There are likely to be a range of factors behind the changes in time taken for outcomes to be assigned, which will vary by crime type. The volume of charge/summonses assigned to robbery offences rose by 13.4%; within this ‘robbery of business property’ increased by 41.4% (from 1,840 in the previous year to 2,601 in the latest) and ‘robbery of personal property’ was up 3.4% (from 5,138 to 5,312 charges in the latest).

2.7 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

Alternate offences are where a suspect has been subsequently charged or cautioned with a different offence to that recorded by the police. This can arise because the crime recording standards require forces to record on the basis of the offence committed in law. This ensures a consistent approach to recording and reflects the experience of victims. However, the application of the CPS charging standards can result in some charges being downgraded, but details of which offence has been charged are not collected from forces. This is much more common for victim-based offences than for non-victim-based offences. Data on the number of charges for alternate offences was not available for Devon & Cornwall, Durham and Gloucestershire and these cannot be separately identified from other charges for these forces.

Approximately 11.4% of all charge outcomes recorded for victim-based offences in the year ending March 2025 were for an alternate offence. Just over 2 in 10 of charge outcomes recorded for violence offences were downgraded to a lesser offence (21.7%). This was more common for violence with injury (39.8% of all charge/summons outcomes were for alternate offences) than violence without injury (8.3%). Overall, 4.0% of all rape charge outcomes and 6.7% of all sexual offences (including rape) were downgraded to a lesser offence.

Figure 2.8: Proportion of charge/summonsed outcomes assigned to alternate offences, recorded in the year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 1.4, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Question 4

3.  Non-victim-based offences

Accepted Answer

This chapter reports on those crimes described as non-victim-based, that is where the offence has not been committed directly against an individual victim but against society. They comprise: public disorder, drug offences, possession of weapons and other items, handling stolen goods and other miscellaneous offences committed against the state (see Section 1).

Non-victim-based crimes differ from victim-based crimes, not only in terms of the make-up of these offences but also in terms of the distribution of investigative outcomes these offences typically receive.

Key findings

This bulletin reports on investigative outcomes that police forces have assigned to notifiable non-victim-based offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. The key findings for the year ending March 2025 were:

the proportion of non-victim-based crimes resulting in a charge and/or summons increased slightly, to 12.4% (compared with 11.4% the previous year); this was the second annual rise following a steady decline between the year ending March 2016, when it was at a high of 28.8%, and March 2023 (10.3%)
the most common reason for a case being closed remained no suspect having been identified, with 22.3% of cases closed this way, around a 2-percentage point fall when compared with the previous year (24.2%)
the proportion of offences receiving an out-of-court disposal was 11.0% this year, around a 1-percentage point rise on the previous year (10.3%)
the proportion of investigations not yet assigned an outcome increased slightly to 10.9%, compared with 10.2% in the previous year
looking at the combined total for the evidential difficulties outcomes, the proportion of offences closed this way decreased slightly to 37.2% this year, a 1-percentage point drop when compared with last year (38.0%)

The length of time it took police forces to assign an investigative outcome for a non-victim-based crime varied by both the type of offence and the type of outcome:

overall, an average (median) of 19 days was taken between the date the crime was recorded and the day the outcome was assigned, a decrease of one day compared with the previous year
for non-victim-based offences assigned with the charge/summons outcome, the average number of days to assign the outcome was 47 days (up from 46 days the previous year)
there was an increase in the average days to a charge/summons outcome for drug offences (up by one, from 61 to 62 days)
There was also an increase in the average days to a charge/summons outcome for possession of weapons offences (up by one day from 21 days to 22 days) and a decrease in public order offences (down by 5 days, from 41 days to 36 days)

The police recorded 1% more non-victim-based offences this year compared with last year (up slightly from 826,983 to 838,842). Subsequently, there was a slight rise in volumes of investigations closed, 747,283 non-victim-based offences recorded in the year ending March 2025 were assigned an outcome, an increase from 742,427 from the previous year (a 0.7% rise). Within this, the volume of charge/summons outcomes increased from 94,469 to 104,055 (a 10.1% rise). The charge/summons rate for non-victim-based offences also rose slightly this year, with the charge rate at 12.4%, an increase of just under 1 percentage point compared with last year. The proportion of offences not yet assigned an outcome (10.9%) increased slightly, by just under 1 percentage point, when compared with the previous year.

Figure 3.1: Proportion of non-victim-based offences resulting in a charge and/or summons or out of court disposal, or where an outcome is yet to be assigned, year ending March 2015 to year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 1.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences, which are reported on in Section 4. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 41 forces (plus the British Transport Police). Data excludes Devon & Cornwall and Greater Manchester. Following the implementation of a new IT system in November 2022, Devon & Cornwall Police have been unable to supply outcomes data for the quarters; from October 2022 to March 2024. Following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, Greater Manchester Police have been unable to supply data for quarters from July 2019 to March 2020.
Percentages displayed in the chart may differ slightly from those reported in the text as the figures in the chart exclude Greater Manchester as well as Devon & Cornwall (see Section 1).

3.1 Variation in outcomes by offence group

As in previous years, how crimes were resolved varied considerably by the type of crime and reflected a range of factors including: the nature of the offence, differing police priorities and the varying challenges in gathering evidence. For example, it will generally be far more difficult to identify a suspect for a public order offence that was not witnessed or caught on CCTV, than one where such intelligence is available. In contrast, for some crimes such as drug possession offences, the police may have apprehended the offender at the time the crime came to their attention, making a formal or informal criminal justice sanction much more likely. Similarly, for an offence where substantial forensic evidence exists, it will be easier to proceed to a charge than for one where such evidence does not exist.

Around 1 in 8 (12.4%) of non-victim-based offences resulted in a charge/summons for the year ending March 2025, which was 6 percentage points higher than for victim-based offences (6.3%). Around another 1 in 9 non-victim-based offences (11.0%) resulted in an out-of-court (formal and informal) outcome, 9 percentage points higher than for victim-based offences (2.4%). In part, this reflects the crime recording rules where the police are only required to record a non-victim-based offence if the points to prove are made out at the time the offence is identified. This is a higher bar than set out in the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) for victim-based offences. As a result, non-victim-based crimes are more likely to have sufficient evidence to allow the police to proceed with a charge/summons or out-of-court disposal within a shorter timeframe.

The variation in outcomes across the 4 different non-victim-based offence groups is illustrated in Figure 3.2 (a more detailed offence breakdown can be found in bulletin Table 2.2.

Figure 3.2: Proportion of outcomes assigned to non-victim-based offences, by offence group and outcome type, year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 2.2, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 43 forces (plus the BTP).

During the year ending March 2025, non-victim-based offences took less time on average from an offence being recorded to receiving a formal or informal criminal justice sanction (29 days), compared with victim-based offences which on average took longer to receive a formal or informal criminal justice sanction (40 days). Victim-based crimes tend to be more complicated in nature (as explained in Section 2) and usually take longer to investigate. To highlight this, we can compare long-term trends for one of the victim-based offence groups compared with one of the non-victim-based offence groups.

Within victim-based, if we look at rape offences, for example, there were 55,685 offences recorded in 2020/21, and around 841 offences received a charge/summons that year, with the total more than trebling to 3,030 in the year ending March 2025. Within non-victim-based, if we select drug offences, for example, in 2020/21, there were 211,120 (refer to bulletin Table 1.6) drug offences, of which 43,077 closed with a charge/summons outcome that year. Following this same cohort of offences, by the year ending March 2025 the number which had been assigned a charge/summons outcome had increased by 31.6% (up to 56,694).

Non-victim-based offences took on average 4 days longer (up from 25 to 29 days) to assign a formal or informal criminal justice sanction in the year ending March 2025, compared with the previous year. Non-victim-based offences on average took around 47 days for a charge/summons outcome to be assigned (up one day from the previous year). On average, out-of-court disposals took longer to be assigned to non-victim-based offences than to victim-based offences, with out-of-court (formal) outcomes averaging to around 55 days during the latest year (an increase of around 20 days when compared with the previous year). Out-of-court (informal) outcomes were assigned, on average, after 15 days during the latest year (an increase of around 2 days when compared with the previous year).

Figure 3.3: The average (median) length of time taken to assign an outcome to non-victim-based offences between the year ending March 2021 and the year ending March 2025, by outcome group, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
The number of median days includes 41 territorial police forces. Excludes Humberside and Greater Manchester Police. The data for these forces was identified to have quality issues or the data was not provided at record level to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) in time for the reporting period.

Table 3.1: Number of outcomes assigned by offence type and outcome group, for year ending March 2025, England and Wales

	Charged/summonsed	Out-of-court (formal and informal)	Investigation complete - no suspect identified	Evidential difficulties	Offences not yet assigned an outcome	Other	Total offences
Drug offences	37,840	71,398	19,208	33,513	28,827	13,159	203,945
Possession of weapons offences	16,746	4,244	6,215	18,865	7,889	3,451	57,410
Public order offences	36,324	13,770	142,932	213,776	32,265	14,613	453,680	`
Misc. crimes against society	13,145	3,227	19,063	46,229	22,578	19,565	123,807
Total state offences	104,055	92,639	187,418	312,383	91,559	50,788	838,842
Total victim offences	283,836	106,727	1,883,738	1,693,109	351,215	152,069	4,470,694

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Data excludes fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
The figures relate to the number of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 43 forces (plus the BTP).

3.2 Drug offences

Around 54% of drug offences received a formal or informal criminal justice sanction, with around 1 in 5 receiving a charge/summons outcome (18.6%) and around twice as many (35.0%) receiving an out-of-court disposal. There was a difference between how possession of cannabis and possession of other drugs were resolved, with cannabis possession having a much lower charge/summons rate (16.7%) than for other possession of drug offences (29.7%). This reflects the fact that possessions of small amounts of cannabis for personal use will often be dealt with through a cannabis warning or a Community Resolution, but the suspect must accept responsibility for such outcomes to be applied.

Trends in the volume of drug offences can be influenced by police activity, such as stop and search, with the latest statistics (year ending March 2024) showing that half (50%, or 38,221) of all arrests resulting from section 1 stop and searches were made where the initial search reason was suspicion of drug possession (see Stop and search, arrests and mental health detentions in England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2024). This reflects that there is often evidence to apply a formal or informal sanction, due to evidence being immediately available.

The proportion and number of drugs searches steadily increased between the years ending March 2018 and March 2021, but has reduced in the 3 years since then. The peak in the year ending March 2021 may have been affected by proactive searches for drugs during national lockdowns throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Several police forces reported that a reduction in demand for other calls for service during periods in which there were restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, gave increased capacity for proactive policing.

In the year ending March 2025, drug possession offences received a higher proportion of charge/summons outcomes (20.6%) than drug trafficking offences (14.3%).

As might be expected, compared with other offence types, a relatively small proportion of drug offences were closed due to no suspect being identified (9.4%).

Around half (51.1%) of all cannabis offences were resolved with Community Resolutions, compared with 28.6% of possession offences involving other drugs. Most of drug possession offences recorded in the year ending March 2025 related to cannabis (95,274 compared with around 41,470 offences of all other drug types) and as a result, the overall charge rate for possession of drug offences has been driven by the charge rate for possession of cannabis.

It should be noted that police forces have differing local policies on using out-of-court disposals for cannabis possessions, which needs to be considered when looking at force-level breakdowns. For example, the Metropolitan Police, Avon and Somerset and Lancashire Constabulary do not use Cannabis/Khat Warnings for simple possession of cannabis offences, instead preferring the use of Community Resolutions when appropriate.

The average number of days taken to assign an outcome for drug offences decreased from 28 days in the previous year to 22 days in the latest year ending March 2025. Some forces in the past have reported a backlog of forensic examinations, including analysis of items such as mobile phones, to ascertain evidence of drug dealing, as well as testing to identify the drugs that have been seized. The average days taken to assign a charge/summons outcome for all drug offences has gone up by one day compared with the previous year (from 61 to 62 days).

Around 6 in 10 (55.0%) drug offences were assigned an outcome within the first 30 days of the offence being recorded. Around a third of this (accounting for 17.9% of all drug offences) were assigned an outcome on the same day the offence was recorded. Around a quarter (24.6%) of drug offences took more than 100 days for an outcome to be assigned (see Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.4: The time taken (median days) for outcomes to be assigned to offences broken down by offence types, year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
The number of median days includes 41 territorial police forces. Excludes Humberside and Greater Manchester Police. The data for these forces was identified to have quality issues or the data was not provided at record level to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) in time for the reporting period.

3.3 Possession of weapons offences

Around 36.6% of possession of weapons offences received a formal or informal criminal justice sanction, with nearly 3 in 10 receiving a charge/summons outcome (29.2%), which is the highest for any non-victim-based offence (see Figure 3.2). Around 7.4% of offences received an out-of-court disposal, which was a relatively low proportion compared with other non-victim-based offence groups. This reflects the nature of these offences and means out-of-court disposals are often not appropriate. As a comparison, the equivalent figure for drug offences was 35%, as many of these can be dealt with out of court (see Figure 3.2).

Around a third (32.9%) of all possession of weapons offences were closed with an evidential difficulties outcome, meaning a suspect could not be proceeded against.

Trends in possession of weapons offences were similar to those for drug offences in that they are both influenced by police activity, such as use of stop and search. This means that there is often evidence to apply a formal or informal sanction as, for offences of possession of an illegal weapon, suspects are often caught ‘red-handed’.

Nearly half (49.3%) of all possession of weapons offences were those related to the possession of an article with a blade or point (such as a knife), and 32.4% of such offences resulted in a charge/summons outcome.

The average number of days taken to assign an outcome for possession of weapons offences has increased when compared with the previous year (28 days in the year ending March 2025 compared with 25 days the previous year). The average number of days taken to assign a charge/summons outcome for all possession of weapons offences increased by one day, to 22 days, across the same period.

Around 5 in 10 (51.9%) possession of weapons offences were assigned an outcome within the first 30 days of the offence being recorded, with around a fifth of these (accounting for 10.4% of all possession of weapons offences) being assigned on the same day as the offence was recorded. A quarter (25.1%) of possession of weapons offences took more than 100 days for an outcome to be assigned (see Figure 3.5).

Table 3.2: The average (median) length of time taken to assign an outcome between the year ending March 2020 and the year ending March 2025, by offence group, non-victim-based offences, England and Wales

	Year ending March 2020	Year ending March 2021	Year ending March 2022	Year ending March 2023	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2025	Difference between year ending March 2024 and year ending March 2025
Drug offences	26	20	23	25	28	22	-6
Possession of weapons offences	25	28	29	26	25	28	3
Public order offences	12	11	13	13	15	16	1
Miscellaneous offences	25	25	28	26	25	27	2

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH), Table 3.1, Crime outcomes in England and Wales, year ending March 2025: data tables

Notes:

Median number of days for the year ending March 2019 to the year ending March 2023 are as first published.
Only includes data for forces who send record-level data to HODH.

3.4 Public order offences

Around 1 in 9 (11.1%) of public order offences received a formal or informal criminal justice sanction (a 2 percentage point increase when compared with the previous year), and 8.0% (1 percentage point higher than the previous year) received a charge/summons outcome. Almost half (47.1%; the same proportion as the previous year) of offences received an evidential difficulties outcome, which is the highest of any non-victim-based offence. Around a third (31.5%; 2 percentage points lower than the previous year) of all public order offences received an ‘investigation complete - no suspect identified’ outcome.

Around three-quarters (72.7%) of all public order offences were offences that related to public fear, alarm or distress, and 12.5% of total offences were for racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress. Of the recorded offences of public fear, alarm or distress, 3.3% resulted in a charge/summons, whereas 10.1% of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress resulted in a charge/summons.

The average number of days taken to assign an outcome for public order offences increased slightly to 16 days in the year ending March 2025 (up from 15 days the previous year). The average number of days taken to assign a charge/summons outcome for all public order offences decreased even more (down by 5 days to 36 days).

Around 6 in 10 (63.2%) of public order offences were assigned an outcome within the first 30 days of the offence being recorded. Around a fifth of these (accounting for 12.2% of all public order offences) were assigned with an outcome on the same day the offence was recorded. Around 12.6% of public order offences took more than 100 days for an outcome to be assigned (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5: The length of time between non-victim-based offences being recorded and outcomes being assigned in the year ending March 2025

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Data excludes fraud offences. Fraud offences are recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) rather than police forces.
The number of median days includes 41 territorial police forces. Excludes Humberside and Greater Manchester Police. The data for these forces was identified to have quality issues or the data was not provided at record level to the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) in time for the reporting period.

3.5 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

The Home Office Counting Rules require the police to record offences based on the crime that has been committed. However, sometimes the police or Crown Prosecution Service may decide to charge a defendant with an alternative offence. This is much less common for non-victim-based offences than victim-based offences. Approximately 5.1% of all charge outcomes recorded for non-victim-based offences in the year ending March 2025 were for an alternate offence. Nearly 1 in 13 (7.5%) of charge/summons outcomes recorded against public order offences related to an alternative offence. This was less common for offences such as drug offences (2.5% of all charge/summons outcomes were for alternate offences). From the data held centrally by the Home Office it is not possible to identify the specific alternate offence that has been charged.

Question 5

4.  Outcomes for offences involving knives or sharp instruments, or firearms

Accepted Answer

To provide additional context to the main police recorded crime series, which is an offence-based collection, the Home Office have a number of special collections which allow forces to provide further details on the nature and circumstances of specific recorded offences. This includes information on selected offences that involved the use, or threat, of a knife or sharp instrument, or a firearm. While information on these offences is regularly published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), investigative outcomes for such weapon-enabled offences have not previously been published. This was due to data for these collections being supplied to the Home Office separately from the main police recorded crime and investigative outcome data. With the introduction of the National Data Quality Improvement Service (NDQIS), we can now map these data across systems for the offences involving knives or sharp instruments collection. For offences involving firearms, we have worked with police forces to improve the data so we can also join across the datasets.

This data is being released for the first time in this statistical bulletin as Official Statistics in Development. These are statistics that are undergoing development which we will seek feedback from users on their quality and value.

Data is available for offences involving a knife or sharp instrument and those involving firearms from all 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. Data on outcomes for knife and sharp instrument offences were additionally provided by the British Transport Police (BTP).

Key findings

around 1 in 9 offences involving a firearm resulted in a charge/summons outcome (12.0%), higher than the rate for offences not involving a firearm (7.3%). Lethal-barrelled firearms offences had a higher charge/summons rate (13.3%) than non-lethal-barrelled firearms offences (10.4%)
the charge/summons rate for knife-enabled offences (also 1 in 9; 11.5%) was also higher than for the equivalent offences not involving a knife (6.7%)
knife-enabled robbery offences had a higher charge/summons rate (9.0%) than robberies that did not involve a knife (6.9%)
knife-enabled assaults also had a higher charge/summons rate (13.2%) than assaults that did not involve a knife (7.7%)

4.1 Offences involving firearms (excluding air weapons)

Offences involving firearms covers any notifiable offences recorded by the police where a firearm has been fired, used as a blunt instrument or used as a threat. The collection covers a wide range of weapon types, from the most serious ones, such as handguns and shotguns, through to air guns and imitation weapons. To distinguish between the lethality of the weapon used, information is presented for lethal-barrelled (including unknowns) and non-lethal barrelled firearms. Lethal barrelled is a term used by police forces to classify offences involving more powerful weapons such as shotguns, handguns, rifles, machine guns, other converted imitation firearms and disguised firearms. Unknown firearms are where the police force was unable to identify which type of firearm was used in the offence. This mirrors the presentation of the ONS annual release of statistics on the volumes of these offences recorded.

Firearm possession offences, where the firearm has not been used in the course of another offence, are not included. As these possession offences are defined as specific crimes in law, they form their own categories in the main recorded crime collection and information on the investigative outcomes of these offences can be found in the main outcomes tables.

In the year ending March 2025, the police in England and Wales recorded 5,103 offences involving a firearm. We were able to map 4,893 (96%) of these offences to an investigative outcome. We will work with forces to improve this mapping rate in future releases.

For offences recorded in the year ending March 2025, the charge/summons rate was higher for offences involving a firearm (12.0%) than it was for offences not involving a firearm (7.3%). There was also a difference by type of firearm, with lethal-barrelled and unknown offences having a higher charge/summons rate (13.3%) than non-lethal-barrelled firearms offences (10.4%). This may reflect the higher severity of offences involving lethal-barrelled firearm offences.

There was also a much higher proportion of investigations with a final outcome not yet assigned for offences involving firearms (20.2%) compared with those that did not involve a firearm (8.3%). The rate was higher for those that involved a lethal-barrelled or unknown firearm (24.3%). This may reflect the greater complexity and time required to investigate such offences. This also impacts on the distribution of other outcomes as investigations are closed. As this is the first year these data have been published, a time series is not yet available.

Just under a third (31.6%) of offences involving firearms were assigned an evidential difficulties outcome, a lower proportion than those that did not involve a firearm (38.1%). This proportion was similar for lethal-barrelled and unknown (31.5%) and non-lethal barrelled (31.7%) firearms offences. Again, we expect the number of cases closed with evidential difficulties to rise as more outcomes are finalised. The variation in outcomes is illustrated in Figure 4.1. below.

Figure 4.1: Proportion of outcomes assigned by outcome group and type of firearm, for offences involving firearms recorded in the year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Proportions as at the time data was provided to the Home Office.
Based on data from 43 forces (excluding the British Transport Police).
Other includes: not in the public interest (CPS); Not in public interest (Police); Offender Died; Prosecution prevented (suspect under age; suspect too ill; victim/key witness dead/too ill); Prosecution time limit expired; offences asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs); caution - adults; caution - youths; Penalty Notices for Disorder; Cannabis/Khat Warnings and community resolutions.

The investigative outcome varied by offence group, reflecting a range of factors involved in police outcomes (see Section 2.2 for more detail). For example, the highest charge/summons rate was for robbery offences involving a firearm (17.6%), which was more than twice as high as for robbery offences not involving firearms (7.5%).

For all offence groups, apart from criminal damage and arson, there was a higher charge/summons rate for offences involving a firearm compared with those not involving a firearm. For criminal damage and arson, the rate was 1.6% for those ithat involved use of firearms and 4.7% for those that did not. This is likely to reflect that around 6 in 10 (62%) of criminal damage and arson offences with a firearm involved a BB gun. The full range of outcomes by offence group are shown in Figure 4.2 below.

Figure 4.2: Proportion of outcomes assigned by outcome group and offence group, for offences involving firearms recorded in the year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 43 forces (excluding the British Transport Police).
Out-of-court includes: caution - adults; caution - youths; Penalty Notices for Disorder; Cannabis/Khat Warnings and community resolutions.
Other includes: not in the public interest (CPS); Not in public interest (Police); Offender Died; Prosecution prevented (suspect under age; suspect too ill; victim/key witness dead/too ill); Prosecution time limit expired; offences asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs).
Evidential difficulties includes: evidential difficulties where the suspect was/was not identified and the victim does not support further action.

4.2 Offences involving knives or sharp instruments

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.

The collection covers selected offences. These are:

actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm or assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm
attempted murder
robbery
threats to kill
rape
sexual assault

In the quarterly crime statistics releases published by the ONS, information for knife-enabled homicides is taken from the Home Office Homicide Index (HOHI). These data have not been included here as the HOHI contains data on court outcomes, which differs from the crime outcomes data for the main police recorded crime collection.

In the year ending March 2025, the police in England and Wales recorded 52,843 knife-enabled offences (excluding homicide). Over 99% of these offences were mapped to an investigative crime outcome.

For offences recorded in the year ending March 2025, 11.5% of knife-enabled offences were dealt with by a charge or summons. This was a higher rate than for the corresponding non-knife-enabled selected offences (6.7%).

There was a similar proportion of investigations still open at the time of analysis for knife-enabled crime (14.1%) compared with those that did not involve a knife (14.9%). This impacts the distribution of other crime outcomes and we expect the rates to change as more crimes are closed following an investigation. As this is the first year these data have been published, a time series is not available.

Just over 4 in 10 (43.0%) knife-enabled crimes were assigned an evidential difficulties outcome, a lower proportion than the corresponding figure for offences that did not involve a knife (53.4%).

The charge/summons rate for assault with injury and assault with intent to cause serious harm was almost twice as high for knife-enabled offences (13.2%) compared with these offences not involving a knife (7.7%). This reflects the serious nature of these offences involving a knife or sharp instrument.

Knife-enabled robbery offences also had a higher charge/summons rate (9.0%) compared with offences that did not involve a knife (6.9%). Around half (49.7%) of knife-enabled robbery offences were closed with investigation complete – no suspect identified, a similar proportion to robberies that did not involve a knife (53.2%). Figure 4.2 gives the full breakdown of outcomes by offence group.

Figure 4.3: Proportion of outcomes assigned by outcome group and knife-enabled and non-knife-enabled selected offences recorded in the year ending March 2025, England and Wales

Source: Home Office Data Hub (HODH)

Notes:

Proportions show the percentage of crimes recorded in the year receiving each outcome.
Based on data from 44 forces.
Out-of-court includes: caution - adults; caution - youths; Penalty Notices for Disorder; Cannabis/Khat Warnings and community resolutions.
Other includes: not in the public interest (CPS); Not in public interest (Police); Offender Died; Prosecution prevented (suspect under age; suspect too ill; victim/key witness dead/too ill); Prosecution time limit expired; offences asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs).
Evidential difficulties includes: evidential difficulties where the suspect was/was not identified and the victim does not support further action.

Question 6

5.  Investigative outcomes assigned to fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences

Accepted Answer

Key findings

the number of fraud offences recorded increased slightly by 1% between the year ending March 2024 and the year ending March 2025, from 1,214,639 offences to 1,225,778 offences
the number of Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences recorded increased by 36%, from 40,832 in the year ending March 2024 to 55,576 in the year ending March 2025
as in previous years, a relatively small number of fraud and CMA offences were referred to territorial forces for investigation (equivalent to 4% for the year ending March 2025; see Section 5.1); however, there was an increase of 104% in the number of fraud offences referred to forces for investigation compared with the previous year, from 24,870 to 50,715 offences
in contrast, there was a decrease in the number of CMA offences referred to forces for investigation, down 35% from 3,388 to 2,202
the total number of fraud offences assigned an investigative outcome increased from 41,612 in the year ending March 2024 to 42,847 (up 3%) in the year ending March 2025, while the total number of CMA offences assigned an outcome decreased from 7,321 to 4,667 (down 36%)

5.1 Introduction

Action Fraud is the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre. More information on the recording of fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences can be found in section five of the Crime Statistics User Guide.

Action Fraud reports are reviewed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), based at the City of London Police, who are responsible for allocating offences to forces for them to investigate (these are known as a ‘dissemination package’). Each dissemination package can be made up of any number of offences, from one to hundreds. If investigators believe one suspect or set of suspects is responsible for a number of different offences, many similar crimes may be linked together. Also an offence can be included in more than one dissemination package, if it links to multiple crime networks. However, each offence only receives one final investigative outcome.

The police recorded crime series, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also incorporates offences reported to the NFIB by 2 fraud prevention industry bodies: Cifas and UK Finance. Figures for these fraud bodies have been included in fraud and total counts only, as neither industry body collects or provides reports relating to CMA offences.

Outcomes figures for the year ending March 2024 differ from those published last year and are based on updated data received from the NFIB (see Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2023 to 2024 for the previous publication). For the year ending March 2025, revised figures will be published next year as additional outcomes records are added to the system over the coming months. Where comparisons are made to last year, these are based on the revised data.

For further information on the NFIB’s outcomes recording process please see the Technical Annex Section.

The outcomes presented in this section differ to those relating to other crime types as they are the number of outcomes recorded within a year regardless of when the offence occurred.

Why are so few fraud cases resolved each year?

fraud offences are often very difficult to investigate, with offenders working in gangs and often remotely in overseas jurisdictions
fraud offences are often committed anonymously online, meaning that unlike other crime types, there will often be little tangible evidence such as CCTV footage; for the reasons above, fraud cases can then take a long time to be tried in court
fraud offences are only referred to forces for investigation when there is a viable lead
while territorial police forces are mandated to provide outcome data to the Home Office via the NFIB, other agencies that sometimes lead investigations are not and therefore may not report outcomes to the NFIB

5.2 Fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences, referrals and outcomes in the year ending March 2025 - headline findings

The findings from the referrals and outcomes data for the year ending March 2025 are presented below. Fraud and CMA offences are presented separately as they differ in their nature and investigation.

Table 5.1 shows the number of unique fraud and CMA offences sent to police forces for investigation, alongside the total number of fraud and CMA offences recorded in the years ending March 2024 and 2025.

The number of recorded fraud offences has almost tripled since the year ending March 2013, with steady increases seen in almost every year across the period (see Nature of fraud and computer misuse in England and Wales: appendix tables for more information). In the most recent year, the increase was smaller than in previous years, at 1%, bringing the number of offences from 1,214,639 in the year ending March 2024 to 1,225,778 offences. It is too early to determine if this is the start of a change in the long-term trend.

The number of fraud offences referred to territorial police forces for investigation in the last year has increased twofold, but remained low overall. There were 24,870 cases referred in the year ending March 2024, and 50,715 in the year ending March 2025.

In contrast, the number of CMA offences referred to forces for investigation fell (by 35%) from 3,388 in the previous year to 2,202 in the latest year.

The NFIB has updated its processes for determining which reports are referred for investigation to enable a more efficient, timely and effective identification of those allegations that present the greatest enforcement opportunities. This has led to the substantial increase in fraud referrals, including a very large case sent to the Metropolitan Police, while CMA reports have seen a small decline related to this renewed focus.

Table 5.1: Number of fraud and CMA offences and referrals, years ending March 2024 and March 2025¹

	Year ending Mar 2024	Year ending Mar 2024	Year ending Mar 2024	Year ending Mar 2025	Year ending Mar 2025	Year ending Mar 2025	Percentage change	Percentage change	Percentage change
	Fraud	CMA	Total	Fraud	CMA	Total	Fraud	CMA	Total
Total number of offences:	1,214,639	40,832	1,255,471	1,225,778	55,576	1,281,354	1%	36%	2%
Number recorded by Action Fraud	312,009	40,832	352,841	299,046	55,576	354,622	-4%	36%	1%
Number recorded by Cifas³	348,337	[x]	348,337	381,709	[x]	381,709	10%	[x]	10%
Number recorded by UK Finance³	554,293	[x]	554,293	545,023	[x]	545,023	-2%	[x]	-2%
Total number of unique offences within referrals²	24,870	3,388	28,290	50,715	2,202	52,949	104%	-35%	87%

Notes:

Caution should be taken when comparing data for fraud offences and referrals. Data is presented for offences and referrals recorded within the year. Offences which were referred to forces for investigation will not necessarily be sent in the year the offence was recorded.
These numbers reflect the total number of unique offences referred to forces for further investigation. Offences in 2 or more dissemination packages are only counted once, and the overall total includes some offences without a final offence code. Totals therefore do not equal the sum of their subcategories.
Cifas and UK Finance do not report CMA offences.

[x] indicates that data is not applicable.

5.3 Outcomes recorded against fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences by outcome type

Tables 5.2.1 and 5.2.2 show the number of investigative outcomes recorded by the police against fraud and CMA offences in the year ending March 2024 and the year ending March 2025, by outcome type. These are presented alongside the total number of fraud and CMA offences referred to territorial police forces and the total number of recorded fraud and CMA offences for the latest and previous year. The figures presented here differ from the way in which they are presented in Section 2 for all other recorded crime since it is not currently possible to link individual crime records to their respective outcomes for fraud and CMA offences. The outcomes included here simply relate to cases closed in the latest year and may relate to cases referred to forces in a previous year.

Table 5.2.1: Number of fraud outcomes recorded, years ending March 2024 and March 2025 by outcome type^{2, 4}

Outcome type/group	Year ending March 2024⁴	Year ending March 2025	Percentage change between March 2024 and March 2025
All Charged/Summonsed	3,699	5,530	49%
Charged/Summonsed	3,428	5,057	48%
Charged/Summonsed - alternate offence	271	473	75%
Taken Into Consideration¹	117	150	28%
Out-of-court (formal)	432	411	-5%
Caution - youths	7	12	[z]
Caution - youths - alternate offence	0	0	[z]
Caution - adults	400	380	-5%
Caution - adults - alternate offence	25	18	[z]
Penalty Notices for Disorder	0	1	[z]
Out-of-court (informal)	609	617	1%
Cannabis/Khat Warning³	[x]	[x]	[z]
Community resolution	609	617	1%
Community resolution - alternate offence	10	2	[z]
Prosecution prevented or not in the public interest	581	483	-17%
Offender died	35	28	[z]
Not in public interest (CPS)	37	25	[z]
Not in public interest (Police)	240	127	-47%
Prosecution prevented - suspect under age	4	3	[z]
Prosecution prevented - suspect too ill	68	70	3%
Prosecution prevented - victim/key witness dead/too ill	183	219	20%
Prosecution time limit expired	14	11	[z]
Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action)	9,914	13,026	31%
Evidential difficulties (victim does not support action)	7,392	7,504	2%
Evidential difficulties: suspect not identified; victim does not support further action	2,087	2,046	-2%
Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim does not support further action	5,305	5,458	3%
Investigation complete - no suspect identified⁵	16,296	12,552	-23%
Action undertaken by another body/agency	1,416	1,511	7%
Further investigation to support formal action not in the public interest	777	697	-10%
Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action⁶	379	366	-3%
Total number of outcomes	41,612	42,847	3%
Total number of unique offences within referrals⁷	24,870	50,715	104%
Total recorded offences	1,214,639	1,225,778	1%

Notes:

Offences asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs).
Offences recorded by Action Fraud, Cifas and UK Finance with outcomes recorded by the NFIB in the years ending March 2024 and March 2025.
This outcome does not apply to fraud offences.
Following updates from forces, figures for the year ending March 2024 have been revised from last year’s publication.
The decrease in this outcome is ascribed to improvements made to the criteria the NFIB use for referring reports to police forces for investigation.
This outcome was introduced in April 2019. This was previously a voluntary outcome type for police forces to record.
These numbers reflect the total number of unique offences referred to forces for further investigation, so offences in 2 or more dissemination packages are only counted once. The overall total includes some offences without a final offence code, so totals do not sum up exactly.

[z] indicates that percentage changes have been suppressed for cases under 50 [x] indicates that data is not applicable.

Table 5.2.2: Number of CMA outcomes recorded, years ending March 2024 and March 2025 by outcome type^{2, 4}

Outcome type/group	Year ending March 2024⁴	Year ending March 2025	Percentage change between March 2024 and March 2025
All Charged/Summonsed	147	61	-59%
Charged/Summonsed	139	55	-60%
Charged/Summonsed - alternate offence	8	6	[z]
Taken Into Consideration¹	0	0	[z]
Out-of-court (formal)	24	19	[z]
Caution - youths	2	4	[z]
Caution - youths - alternate offence	0	1	[z]
Caution - adults	21	13	[z]
Caution - adults - alternate offence	1	1	[z]
Penalty Notices for Disorder	0	0	[z]
Out-of-court (informal)	23	28	[z]
Cannabis/Khat warning³	[x]	[x]	[z]
Community resolution	23	28	[z]
Community resolution - alternate offence	0	0	[z]
Prosecution prevented or not in the public interest	25	15	[z]
Offender died	0	1	[z]
Not in public interest (CPS)	2	0	[z]
Not in public interest (Police)	19	11	[z]
Prosecution prevented - suspect under age	2	0	[z]
Prosecution prevented - suspect too ill	1	0	[z]
Prosecution prevented - victim/key witness dead/too ill	1	2	[z]
Prosecution time limit expired	0	1	[z]
Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action)	728	587	-19%
Evidential difficulties (victim does not support action)	759	674	-11%
Evidential difficulties: suspect not identified; victim does not support further action	341	345	1%
Evidential difficulties: suspect identified; victim does not support further action	418	329	-21%
Investigation complete - no suspect identified⁵	5,467	3,190	-42%
Action undertaken by another body/agency	52	38	[z]
Further investigation to support formal action not in the public interest	61	26	[z]
Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action⁶	35	29	[z]
Total number of outcomes	7,321	4,667	-36%
Total number of unique offences within referrals⁷	3,388	2,202	-35%
Total recorded offences	40,832	55,576	36%

Notes:

Offences asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs).
Offences recorded by Action Fraud, Cifas and UK Finance with outcomes recorded by the NFIB in the years ending March 2024 and March 2025.
This outcome does not apply to fraud offences.
Following updates from forces, figures for the year ending March 2024 have been revised from last year’s publication.
The decrease in this outcome is ascribed to improvements made to the criteria the NFIB use for referring reports to police forces for investigation.
This outcome was introduced in April 2019. This was previously a voluntary outcome type for police forces to record.
These numbers reflect the total number of unique offences referred to forces for further investigation, so offences in 2 or more dissemination packages are only counted once. The overall total includes some offences without a final offence code, so totals do not sum.

[z] indicates that percentage changes have been suppressed for cases under 50 [x] indicates that data is not applicable.

Compared with other crime types (reported in Section 2 and Section 3), a low number of recorded fraud and CMA offences have an investigative outcome because a high volume are screened out by the NFIB as not having viable lines of enquiry (see Section 5.1). More information on this ia availble on the Action Fraud website, see section on ‘How we choose which crimes are sent to forces’.

Between the years ending March 2024 and March 2025, there was a 104% increase in the number of fraud offences referred to police forces for investigation (up by 25,845 offences), and a 35% decrease in CMA referrals (down by 1,186 offences).

There were 5,530 referred fraud offences that were closed with a ‘charge and/or summons’ outcome in the year ending March 2025, 49% more than in the year ending March 2024 (3,699). The number of CMA offences that received a ‘charge and/or summons’ outcome decreased in the same period from 147 to 61.

For fraud offences there was a decrease of 23% in the number of cases closed with an outcome of ‘investigation complete: no suspect identified’, down from 16,296 to 12,552 cases. This outcome was used for 29% of fraud investigative outcomes (down from 39% the previous year). The number of CMA offences that received this outcome decreased by 42%, from 5,467 in the year ending March 2024 to 3,190 in the year ending March 2025.

5.4 Referrals and outcomes by Police Force Area

Tables 5.3.1 and 5.3.2 show fraud and CMA referrals and outcomes data for the years ending March 2024 and March 2025 by Police Force Area (PFA).

As previously mentioned, it is important to note that the number of outcomes does not correspond to the number of offences referred to police forces in a given year. Caution should be taken when comparing the number of outcomes to referred offences as fraud and CMA investigations can take a long time to complete, meaning the offence may have occurred in a previous year. Small numbers at PFA level mean there are fluctuations from year to year.

Table 5.3.1: Fraud and CMA offences referred to forces for investigation¹, by police force area, years ending March 2024 and March 2025²

	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2025	Year ending March 2025	Year ending March 2025
Police Force	Fraud	CMA	Total	Fraud	CMA	Total
Avon and Somerset	298	64	363	576	38	617
Bedfordshire	164	49	213	244	40	284
Cambridgeshire	159	59	219	164	33	197
Cheshire	337	104	441	482	50	534
City of London	2,133	45	2,179	1,223	26	1,249
Cleveland	87	15	102	123	26	150
Cumbria	228	36	264	382	25	407
Derbyshire	123	60	183	481	7	488
Devon and Cornwall	219	55	275	460	57	518
Dorset	495	62	558	461	50	511
Durham	77	12	89	58	18	76
Essex	757	142	899	785	95	881
Gloucestershire	91	27	118	101	17	118
Greater Manchester	1,759	150	1,912	2,101	111	2,215
Hampshire	930	231	1,162	1,000	120	1,123
Hertfordshire	571	136	711	597	81	678
Humberside	166	39	205	421	25	446
Kent	684	147	832	996	96	1,093
Lancashire	426	69	496	593	69	664
Leicestershire	1,581	31	1,612	360	33	393
Lincolnshire	355	33	390	476	25	503
Merseyside	501	44	545	422	31	455
Metropolitan	4,834	626	5,466	27,832	397	28,230
Norfolk	432	51	483	548	31	579
North Yorkshire	167	47	216	228	38	266
Northamptonshire	93	49	143	161	24	186
Northumbria	194	36	230	239	21	260
Nottinghamshire	413	80	493	702	48	750
South Yorkshire	603	57	660	611	16	628
Staffordshire	425	90	516	465	45	510
Suffolk	423	32	455	361	18	379
Surrey	498	61	559	586	35	623
Sussex	565	89	655	569	52	621
Thames Valley	791	126	917	1,258	104	1,363
Warwickshire	73	17	90	150	23	173
West Mercia	277	48	326	453	23	477
West Midlands	1,359	118	1,478	1,945	89	2,035
West Yorkshire	880	88	969	828	48	877
Wiltshire	146	36	184	276	37	313
England	24,291	3,257	27,580	49,658	2,118	51,805
Dyfed-Powys	60	31	91	74	21	97
Gwent	96	15	111	141	10	152
North Wales	147	26	173	193	24	217
South Wales	255	55	310	617	26	643
Wales	558	127	685	1,025	81	1,109
England and Wales	24,849	3,384	28,265	50,682	2,199	52,913
British Transport Police	21	4	25	33	3	36
Grand Total	24,870	3,388	28,290	50,715	2,202	52,949

Notes:

These numbers reflect the total number of unique offences referred to forces for further investigation. Offences in 2 or more dissemination packages are only counted once, and the overall total includes some offences without a final offence code. Totals therefore do not sum across offence type or geography.
Offences reported by Cifas and UK Finance are included in the relevant fraud categories. In publications before the year ending March 2021, these figures were only included in the total number of referred offences.

Table 5.3.2: Outcomes assigned to recorded fraud and CMA offences^{1, 2}, by police force area, years ending March 2024 and March 2025

	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2024	Year ending March 2025	Year ending March 2025	Year ending March 2025
Police Force	Fraud²	CMA²	Total²	Fraud	CMA	Total
Avon and Somerset³	589	117	706	1,109	84	1,193
Bedfordshire	1,231	196	1,427	1,185	78	1,263
Cambridgeshire	492	77	569	562	58	620
Cheshire	387	103	490	352	82	434
City of London	375	20	395	2,610	22	2,632
Cleveland	213	19	232	243	26	269
Cumbria	388	109	497	371	98	469
Derbyshire³	547	118	665	454	487	941
Devon and Cornwall⁴	449	36	485	933	72	1,005
Dorset	913	79	992	1,008	65	1,073
Durham	262	21	283	263	20	283
Essex	1,536	91	1,627	773	126	899
Gloucestershire	283	154	437	176	92	268
Greater Manchester	3,087	206	3,293	2,594	182	2,776
Hampshire	921	258	1,179	980	169	1,149
Hertfordshire	764	108	872	800	130	930
Humberside	466	52	518	308	17	325
Kent³	1,486	178	1,664	2,857	133	2,990
Lancashire	1,955	286	2,241	1,758	191	1,949
Leicestershire	471	6	477	501	27	528
Lincolnshire⁴	695	41	736	981	26	1,007
Merseyside	429	50	479	489	43	532
Metropolitan⁵	5,641	2,851	8,492	3,732	897	4,629
Norfolk	590	42	632	545	53	598
North Yorkshire	334	37	371	429	52	481
Northamptonshire	432	85	517	524	69	593
Northumbria	274	39	313	290	26	316
Nottinghamshire	3,937	557	4,494	2,642	109	2,751
South Yorkshire	1,103	411	1,514	946	330	1,276
Staffordshire	1,179	99	1,278	1,145	68	1,213
Suffolk⁴	299	32	331	465	35	500
Surrey	756	58	814	809	116	925
Sussex	868	86	954	1,130	73	1,203
Thames Valley⁴	1,233	143	1,376	1,459	155	1,614
Warwickshire⁴	346	29	375	445	19	464
West Mercia	586	52	638	537	36	573
West Midlands³	1,177	100	1,277	1,557	95	1,652
West Yorkshire	1,547	101	1,648	1,722	82	1,804
Wiltshire	391	42	433	423	30	453
England	38,632	7,089	45,721	40,107	4,473	44,580
Dyfed-Powys	157	21	178	225	29	254
Gwent	699	24	723	682	18	700
North Wales	1,439	154	1,593	1,222	138	1,360
South Wales	677	30	707	590	7	597
Wales	2,972	229	3,201	2,719	192	2,911
England and Wales	41,604	7,318	48,922	42,826	4,665	47,491
British Transport Police	8	3	11	21	2	23
Grand Total	41,612	7,321	48,933	42,847	4,667	47,514

Notes:

The number of outcomes will not necessarily correspond to the number of referrals in a given year since investigations can take months or longer to complete.
Following updates from forces, figures for the year ending March 2024 have been revised from last year’s publication.
Avon and Somerset Police, Derbyshire Constabulary, Kent Police, and West Midlands Police ascribed their increase in outcomes to the increase in referrals from the NFIB.
Devon and Cornwall Police, Lincolnshire Police, Suffolk Constabulary, Thames Valley Police, and Warwickshire Police credited their increase in outcomes to an improvement in recording processes.
The Metropolitan Police Service experienced a data submission issue affecting outcomes returned in the year ending March 2025. When figures are updated next year, outcome totals for the Metropolitan Police Service are expected to increase.

Question 7

6.  Further information

Accepted Answer

6.1 References

Action Fraud (2025), “Fraud and cyber crime national statistics”. Available at: Fraud and cyber crime national statistics (actionfraud.police.uk)

HM Government (2021), “The end-to-end rape review report on findings and actions”. Available at: The end-to-end rape review report on findings and actions (publishing.service.gov.uk)

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) (2019), “Fraud: Time to choose - An inspection of the police response to fraud”. Available at: Fraud: Time to choose - An inspection of the police response to fraud - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk)

Home Office (2014), “Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2013 to 2014”. Available at: Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2013 to 2014 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Home Office (2024), “Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2023 to 2024”. Available at: Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2023 to 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Home Office (2025), “Criminal justice system (CJS) delivery data dashboard”. Available at: Home - CJS Dashboard(justice.gov.uk)

Home Office (2025), “Home Office Crime Recording Rules for frontline officers and staff”. Available at: Home Office Crime Recording Rules for frontline officers and staff - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Home Office (2025), “Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables”. Available at: Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Home Office (2024), “The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS): What you need to know”. Available at: The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) : What you need to know (publishing.service.gov.uk)

National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) (2022), “All home burglaries will be attended by the police”. Available at: All home burglaries will be attended by the police (npcc.police.uk)

National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) (2024), “Operation Soteria – Transforming the Investigation of Rape”. Available at: Operation Soteria - Transforming the Investigation of Rape (npcc.police.uk)

National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) (2023), “Police now attending scene of every home burglary”. Available at: Police now attending scene of every home burglary (npcc.police.uk)

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2025), “Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables”. Available at: Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2025), “Crime in England and Wales: Year ending March 2025”. Available at: Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2022), “Domestic abuse and the criminal justice system, England and Wales”. Available at: Domestic abuse and the criminal justice system, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2024), “Nature of fraud and computer misuse in England and Wales: appendix tables”. Available at: Nature of fraud and computer misuse in England and Wales: appendix tables - Office for National Statistics

Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2025), “User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales”. Available at: Crime and justice methodology - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) (2025) “Review of fraud and computer misuse statistics for England and Wales”. Available at: Review of fraud and computer misuse statistics for England and Wales – Office for Statistics Regulation

Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) (2023), “The quality of police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales”. Available at: The quality of police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales – Office for Statistics Regulation (statisticsauthority.gov.uk)

6.2 Important information

Before April 2013, official statistics about how the police deal with crimes focused narrowly on ‘detections’ (the number of cases resolved with a formal or informal criminal justice outcome). In April 2013, the Home Office introduced the new outcomes framework and changed the presentation of its crime outcomes statistics.

From April 2014 onwards, police forces have supplied data to the Home Office on a broader set of outcomes, including those that do not result in a formal or informal criminal justice outcome. The year ending March 2014 bulletin, published in July 2014, showed the first provisional statistics from the new outcomes framework. We have since developed the statistics with input from police forces and users.

Since the publication of the year ending June 2023 data in October 2023, data for outcomes 1a, 2a and 3a, have been published within the summary and open tables.

We continue to ensure that these police recorded crime outcomes statistics are:

meeting identified user needs, including providing new analysis and greater transparency
well explained and readily accessible
produced according to sound methods
managed impartially and objectively in the public interest

The statistics in this bulletin are designated as Official Statistics as in January 2014, the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) found that police recorded crime statistics did not meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics. The full assessment report against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority.

In July 2014, the Home Office Chief Statistician and the UKSA Head of Assessment agreed to badge the year to March 2014 Crime Outcomes bulletin as Official Statistics, rather than National Statistics. This reflects the move to the new outcomes framework, and also the possibility that outcomes data is affected by similar issues to those that led to the de-designation of police recorded crime statistics.

Full details are available here: Outcomes (formerly Detections) Statistics: David Blunt to Ed Humpherson Outcomes (formerly Detections) Statistics: Ed Humpherson to David Blunt

The UKSA published a new report on the quality of police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales in 2023 and a separate report on the quality of fraud and CMA statistics in April 2025.

6.3 Previous releases

Earlier editions of this bulletin included a section on outcomes for domestic abuse-related offences. This has not been produced in recent years as data is now published by ONS.

Previous editions of ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales’ bulletins

Copies of other Home Office publications (including crime statistics releases prior to April 2012)

Copies of crime statistics publications from April 2012 are available from the Office for National Statistics website

This includes the User guide to crime statistics, a useful reference guide with explanatory notes regarding the issues and classifications that are key to the production and presentation of the crime statistics.

6.4 Contact details

For further information about crime outcomes statistics, please email: CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk or write to:

Crime and Policing Statistics
5th Floor
2 Ruskin Square
Croydon
CR0 2WF

Home Office Responsible Statistician: John Flatley, Programme Director for Crime Statistics. Contact via CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk

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Applies to England and Wales

Overview of crime outcomes recorded in the year to March 2025, England and Wales

Headline findings

1. Introduction

1.1 Overview

1.2 Data issues

1.3 Victim-based and non-victim-based offences

1.4 The full outcomes framework

1.5 Outcome groupings in this bulletin

1.6 Future changes to the outcomes framework

1.7 Supplementary data tables

1.8 Outcomes for offences that were recorded in the reporting period

1.9 Outcomes for investigations closed in the reporting period

1.10 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

1.11 Updates for fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) statistics

2. Victim-based offences

Key findings

2.1 Variation in outcomes by offence group

2.2 Violence against the person

2.3 Sexual offences

2.4 Rape offences

2.5 Theft offences

2.6 Robbery

2.7 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

3. Non-victim-based offences

Key findings

3.1 Variation in outcomes by offence group

3.2 Drug offences

3.3 Possession of weapons offences

3.4 Public order offences

3.5 Outcomes where a charge or caution has been made for an alternate offence to the one that was recorded

4. Outcomes for offences involving knives or sharp instruments, or firearms

Key findings

4.1 Offences involving firearms (excluding air weapons)

4.2 Offences involving knives or sharp instruments

5. Investigative outcomes assigned to fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences

Key findings

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences, referrals and outcomes in the year ending March 2025 - headline findings

5.3 Outcomes recorded against fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) offences by outcome type

5.4 Referrals and outcomes by Police Force Area

6. Further information

6.1 References

6.2 Important information

6.3 Previous releases

6.4 Contact details

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