Accredited official 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”.