Accredited official 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”.