Crime continues to fall in London with over 46,500 fewer crimes committed during the last financial year.

The Metropolitan Police Service’s latest crime figures for the financial year 2013/14 show a 6.2% reduction in offences in the Capital compared with the previous 12 month period.

A series of proactive measures to cut crime have been rolled out across London. These include regular high-visibility ‘Big Wing’ operations engaging staff right across the MPS in joint action to target specific areas of crime, ranging from mobile phone crime to burglary.

Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne, from the Metropolitan Police Service, said: “Crime is down by 6.2%, with burglary at its lowest in 40 years and robbery at its lowest in 15 years. We’ve also had some excellent results in tackling gangs, weapon-related crime and youth violence.

“This has all been achieved as a result of a lot of hard work by our officers across London and support from our partners to bring offenders to justice and improve our service to victims.

“We are moving in the right direction, but there’s still a great deal of work to do to cut crime further. I hope the people of London will be reassured by these successes and our commitment to making our city a safe and great place to be.”

Robberies are down by 19% (nearly 6,500 fewer offences), which is the lowest level for 15 years. During the last financial year, the Met had a particular focus on tackling robberies that involved the theft of mobiles phones and we have seen a 24% reduction in these offences.

A similar pattern can be seen in relation to theft from person (when no threat or violence has been used), which fell by nearly 6,500 (-13%). Significantly, mobile phone thefts, which represent around 70% of these cases, were reduced by 14% following a range of proactive and prevention work to tackle these offences.

There were more than 7,500 fewer burglaries in London in 2013/14 compared with 2012/13 – a reduction of 8%, bringing burglary down to its lowest level in London since 1974. The Met has introduced a range of operational activity and use of innovative techniques to tackle burglary, including predictive crime mapping, the use of traceable liquids, improved forensic strategies and the use of cross-borough burglary teams to catch offenders.

Violence with injury is slightly up on last year by 852 more offences – an increase of 1.5%, although there has been a 4.3% reduction over two years. This can be attributed to domestic violence offences rather than street violence.

However, offences involving weapons have been reduced over the year – with over 300 fewer gun-related crimes (-17%) and over 1,300 fewer knife offences (-11.5%). Similarly, youth violence fell by 4.1% (nearly 600 fewer victims).

It is two years since the Commissioner launched the Trident Gang Crime Command and we have seen some significant reductions in gang-related crime as a result of enforcement and preventative activity.

During 2013/14, more than 1,400 gang members were arrested and those involved in gang-related crime were jailed for over 1,270 years. A further 1,331 gang members are subject to judicial restrictions such as gang injunctions, ASBOs, electronically tagged or managed under License or Youth Referral Orders. Of those, 940 gang members are in custody.

Trident officers have seized over £940,000 in cash and MPS officers have seized around 330 firearms in the Capital during 2013/14.

Homicides have remained at a similar level with three more cases in 2013/14 than the previous year (110 compared to 107). This should be seen in the context of there being the lowest number of homicides recorded in London in 2011/12 for more than 40 years.

We are also taking better care of those who do fall victim to crime under our Total Victim Care programme. We offer to visit all victims of crime, regardless of the offence or when it happened to offer reassurance and crime prevention advice. In the financial year 2013/14 we have made 203,562 appointments to visit victims of crime – an increase of over 40% on the previous year.

The number of recorded rapes in London has increased by 31.6% from 3,168 offences reported in 2012/13 to 4,170 in 2013/14. We have worked very hard with communities and partners to increase reporting and we believe this suggests that more victims have confidence to report these serious offences to police.

Additionally, we have charged 136 more offenders with rape – a 21% increase. However, we are not complacent and are aware that rape remains significantly under-reported. We will continue to work with our partners to improve our service to victims of rape and sexual assault and to bring more offenders to justice.

Reports of domestic abuse also rose by 11%. This can be attributed to a range of factors including more victims having the confidence to come forward and better scrutiny of crime reports. A proportion of this increase is also due to the definition of domestic abuse being expanded to include over 16-year-olds and ‘coercive control’ [coercive behaviour is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim].

Racist and religious hate crime has increased by 3.1%, whilst homophobic offences have increased by 5.6%. The MPS believes these increases are down to a range of factors, including a growing willingness of victims to report hate crime; an improved awareness of MPS staff to identify these offences; the support provided by more than 500 specialist hate crime investigators working in our 32 dedicated hate crime Community Safety Units (CSUs); and work with the partners to support victims.

We are capitalising on advances in technology and the way we use intelligence with more ANPR systems in our cars to deny criminals use of our roads and mobile fingerprint readers deployed on the streets to give officers information about suspects at their fingertips. Theft of motor vehicle crime has seen a 6.2% reduction, with theft of motor vehicles down 5.7%. Under the monthly Operation Cubo, which sees the organisation mobilise against uninsured drivers and criminals, officers seized a total of 409 vehicles and made 110 arrests during April’s operation.