National statistics

Annex: Statistics on the number of police officers assaulted in the year ending March 2021, England and Wales

Updated 30 March 2022

Applies to England and Wales

Key findings

In the year ending March 2021 there were almost 37,000 assaults on police officers in England and Wales (including British Transport). Of which:

• 25,734 were crimes of “assault without injury on a constable” recorded across all forces an increase of 21% compared with 21,321 in the previous year
• 11,235 crimes of “assault with injury on a constable”^{[footnote 1]} recorded across all forces (including British Transport Police), a small increase of 1.2% compared with 11,106 in the previous year.

Police recorded crime data

The data source for assaults on police officers is the police recorded crime series, which are published quarterly in ‘Crime in England and Wales’, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This note is updated on an annual basis only, so the crime statistics should be used to access data on a quarterly basis.

Previously, it was only possible to identify assaults on police officers that did not result in injury. There was no corresponding crime classification for “assault with injury on a constable”, with such assaults recorded under the relevant offence classification, such as “violence with injury”. A new crime classification for “assault with injury on a constable” was introduced on the 1st April 2017, and this is the fourth year for which such data are available.

Previously, the Home Office used a combination of self-reported assaults data held within police forces’ Human Resource (HR) or health and safety systems and police recorded crime data of “assault without injury on a constable” to estimate the total number of assaults. Since the introduction of the new crime classification “assault with injury on a constable”, data from forces’ health and safety systems are no longer required.

However, there are some differences between what is recorded on the health and safety systems, and what is recorded as a crime. Therefore, data in this note are not comparable with previous years. In particular, the new crime classification of “assault with injury on a constable” will exclude cases of more serious assaults. This is because, in line with the Home Office Counting Rules for recorded crime, the assault will be recorded under a more serious crime classification, such as “attempted murder”, from which it is not possible to separately identify assaults on police officers.

Figure 1 shows the time series trend for the offence of “assault without injury on a constable”, which is comparable over time. Between the years ending March 2009 and March 2013 there had been a general downward trend in the number of offences of “assault without injury on a constable” recorded by the police. It then remained stable until the year ending March 2016, when the number of offences increased by 8%, from 14,369 to 15,513 offences (a smaller increase than the 26% over the same period for victims of the offence of “assault without injury”). In the year ending March 2021, 25,734 offences of “assault without injury on a constable” were recorded by the police, a 21% increase compared with the previous year (compared with a decrease of 10% over the same period for all “assault without injury” cases).

Notes:

1. Includes the British Transport.
2. These figures are published in table A4 of the ‘Crime in England and Wales’ statistical release.

For the year ending March 2021 the Home Office collected data from forces crime recording systems on both the “assault without injury on a constable” and the “assault with injury on a constable” crime classifications. It is known that these data are likely to be an underestimate of the total number of assaults in some forces, as many officers view assaults as part of the job and do not bother to raise a crime record. A further limitation of the data is that it is not always possible for forces to identify whether the police officer was on or off duty at the time of the assault. For these reasons, the figures in Table 1 are not directly comparable at police force area level.

Data on assaults are NOT National Statistics, due to their known limitations. The data are not thought to provide a complete picture of assaults against police officers and there are a number of comparability issues across forces, as described above.

Table 1: Assaults on police officers, England and Wales, year ending March 2021

Force name	Police recorded crime - Assault with injury on a constable	Police recorded crime - Assault without injury on a constable	Total assaults on a constable (with and without injury)
Avon & Somerset	357	1,116	1,473
Bedfordshire	47	290	337
British Transport Police	173	593	766
Cambridgeshire	73	419	492
Cheshire	199	459	658
Cleveland	110	482	592
Cumbria	62	337	399
Derbyshire	196	436	632
Devon & Cornwall	203	768	971
Dorset	52	10	62
Durham	142	441	583
Dyfed-Powys	85	207	292
Essex	282	1,129	1,411
Gloucestershire	123	-	123
Greater Manchester	76	1,203	1,279
Gwent	111	1	112
Hampshire	352	952	1,304
Hertfordshire	152	590	742
Humberside	168	656	824
Kent	252	1,342	1,594
Lancashire	191	613	804
Leicestershire	181	511	692
Lincolnshire	101	294	395
London, City of	9	20	29
Merseyside	359	703	1,062
Metropolitan Police	2,965	3,454	6,419
Norfolk	104	512	616
North Wales	145	312	457
North Yorkshire	654	1	655
Northamptonshire	141	464	605
Northumbria	-	205	205
Nottinghamshire	114	475	589
South Wales	337	390	727
South Yorkshire	258	559	817
Staffordshire	166	247	413
Suffolk	81	354	435
Surrey	201	347	548
Sussex	321	914	1,235
Thames Valley	242	1,071	1,313
Warwickshire	94	212	306
West Mercia	217	404	621
West Midlands	566	518	1,084
West Yorkshire	437	1,723	2,160
Wiltshire	136	-	136
England and Wales	11,235	25,734	36,969

1. The crime code of “assault with injury on a constable” was introduced in April 2017. Previously there was no corresponding crime classification for “assault with injury on a constable”, with such assaults recorded under the relevant offence classification, such as “violence with injury”. ↩