John Wilkins to Ed Humpherson: Regularising knife crime statistics

Dear Ed,

I am writing to inform you that the Home Office intends to begin publishing a new regular series of data covering police recorded knife-enabled robbery offences starting Wednesday 20 May 2026.

The Home Office collects information on police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument (knife-enabled crime) in England and Wales for selected offences, including knife-enabled robbery (KER). KER includes offences where a knife or sharp instrument has been used to injure a victim or used as a threat. This will include offences where the weapon may not have been seen but is believed to be present at the time of the offence by the victim or another witness.

KER offences rose by 9% in the year ending (YE) June 2024 compared with the previous year. As a result of this, the Home Secretary and Policing Minister launched a KER Taskforce, with the first meeting held in October 2024. The purpose of the Taskforce was to agree new operational police tactics to halt the rise in KER offence levels.

The Taskforce was chaired by the Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention. It brought together Chief Constables in the 7 police force areas with the highest and/or rising levels of KER offences. These were: Avon and Somerset, Greater Manchester, Metropolitan, South Yorkshire, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and British Transport Police (England and Wales only). Collectively these forces accounted for 70% of KER in the YE June 2024. The Taskforce was also attended by Mayors/Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in these 7 areas, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, College of Policing, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, as well as other Safer Streets Mission partners.

The Home Office has previously published three ad-hoc statistical releases on KER management information to show the level of these offences since the YE June 2024

baseline for the 7 police forces1. In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics principle to be transparent2 and Standards for the Public Use of Statistics Data and Wider Analysis that require statistics, data and wider analysis used in the public domain available to everyone in a timely way3, Home Office will now move to publish on a regular quarterly basis, starting with monthly data to March 2026.

Improving the transparency of knife crime data is a positive news story for our department and as such we plan to release the very first release at 00:01 on the relevant day, to enable alignment with associated communications activity. After this point we plan to revert to the usual 09:30 publication time, consistent with other Home Office releases.

Yours sincerely,

John Wilkins

Chief Statistician, Home Office

2 https://code.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/the-code-principles/code-principles-dos-and-donts/

3 https://code.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/standards-of-the-code-of-practice/standards-for-the-public-use-of- statistics-data-and-wider-analysis-with-required-practices/