National statistics

Annex: Statistics on the number of police officers assaulted in the year ending March 2022, England and Wales

Published 27 July 2022

Applies to England and Wales

Key findings

In the year ending March 2022 there were just over 41,000 assaults on police officers in England and Wales (including British Transport). Of which:

• 29,491 were crimes of “assault without injury on a constable” recorded across all forces an increase of 11% compared with 26,539 in the previous year

• 11,730 crimes of “assault with injury on a constable”^{[footnote 1]} recorded across all forces (including British Transport Police), a small increase of 2.6% compared with 11,429 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.

Prior to the introduction of the crime classification “assault with injury on a constable” in April 2017, it was only possible to identify assaults on police officers that did not result in injury from the crime statistics. Assaults that resulted in injury were 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 fifth 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.

There are some differences between what is recorded on the health and safety systems, and what is recorded as a crime. In particular, the 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 “assault without injury on a constable”, which is comparable over time. Between the years ending March 2007 and March 2010 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 2015, when the number of offences increased by 8%, from 14,369 to 15,512 offences (a smaller increase than the 26% over the same period for victims of the offence of “assault without injury”). Since the year ending March 2015, there has been an upward trend in the number of offences of “assault without injury on a constable” recorded by the police. In the year ending March 2022, 29,491 offences of “assault without injury on a constable” were recorded by the police, an 11% increase compared with the previous year (compared with an increase of 20% over the same period for all “assault without injury” cases).

Figure 1: Number of offences recorded under “assault without injury on a constable”, England and Wales¹, year ending March 2007 to March 2022²

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 2022 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 Annex A 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.

Annex A: Assaults on police officers, England and Wales, year ending March 2022

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	373	1,294	1667
Bedfordshire	87	353	440
British Transport Police	217	780	997
Cambridgeshire	68	467	535
Cheshire	263	551	814
Cleveland	148	497	645
Cumbria	95	403	498
Derbyshire	176	434	610
Devon & Cornwall	190	683	873
Dorset	101	2	103
Durham	128	516	644
Dyfed-Powys	119	226	345
Essex	267	1,181	1448
Gloucestershire	142	1	143
Greater Manchester	64	1,434	1498
Gwent	112	268	380
Hampshire	386	1,108	1494
Hertfordshire	237	623	860
Humberside	170	629	799
Kent	287	1,399	1686
Lancashire	189	600	789
Leicestershire	249	644	893
Lincolnshire	116	322	438
London, City of	25	56	81
Merseyside	264	771	1035
Metropolitan Police	2823	3,349	6172
Norfolk	154	624	778
North Wales	165	336	501
North Yorkshire	541	0	541
Northamptonshire	170	450	620
Northumbria	145	609	754
Nottinghamshire	117	495	612
South Wales	286	496	782
South Yorkshire	241	565	806
Staffordshire	169	307	476
Suffolk	103	383	486
Surrey	177	412	589
Sussex	287	1,035	1322
Thames Valley	247	1,036	1283
Warwickshire	82	233	315
West Mercia	207	464	671
West Midlands	907	1,423	2330
West Yorkshire	433	1,743	2176
Wiltshire	3	289	292
England and Wales	11,730	29,491	41,221

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”. ↩