Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what additional steps her Department is taking to ensure people receive their passports within published timescales.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks to get their passport. Across the first 6 months of 2022 HMPO processed 97.7% of UK standard applications within 10 weeks.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office has added 850 staff since April 2021. This has helped to ensure that more passport applications are being processed than ever before.
Processing capacity will increase further, with an additional 350 staff arriving within the summer.
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many women were killed by their current or former partner in (a) Suffolk, (b) the East of England and (c) England and Wales in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Newton
The Home Office Homicide Index contains information on partner / ex-partner homicides. Information on the number of women aged 16 or over killed by a partner or ex-partner in (a) Suffolk and (b) the East of England and (c) England and Wales for each of the last five years is given in the table.
Table 1: Number of homicides recorded by the police in Suffolk, the East of England and England and Wales, where a woman aged 16 or over was killed by a partner or ex-partner, 2010/11 to 2014/15 1,2.3 | |||||
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Partner or ex-partner4 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
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Suffolk | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
East of England5 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 3 | 8 |
England and Wales | 97 | 89 | 77 | 85 | 81 |
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1. Source: Homicide Index, Home Office | |||||
2. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics |
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3. As at 13 November 2015; figures are subject to revision as cases are dealt with by the police and by the courts, or as further information becomes available. | |||||
4. Partner / ex-partner homicides include the following relationships: spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, ex-spouse/ex-cohabiting partner/ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, adulterous relationship, lover’s spouse or emotional rival. | |||||
5. Includes Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk police. | |||||
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the number of offences of violence against a person in Bury St Edmunds constituency in the last five years.
Answered by Mike Penning
The Home Office has made no specific assessment of the trend in the number of offences of violence against a person recorded by the police in the Bury St Edmunds constituency over the last five years. The table below provides the number of such offences recorded by the police in the Western Suffolk Community Safety Partnership area, which includes Bury St Edmunds, over that period. It also provides the number of such offences for Suffolk as a whole.
Violence against the person offences recorded by the police, Western Suffolk Community Safety Partnership and Suffolk police force area, year ending June 2010 to year ending June 2015 | |||||||
Year ending June 2010 | Year ending June 2011 | Year ending June 2012 | Year ending June 2013 | Year ending June 2014 | Year ending June 2015 | % change year ending June 2010 to year ending June 2015 | |
Western Suffolk Community Safety Partnership | 3,046 | 3,008 | 3,003 | 2,897 | 3,027 | 4,211 | 38% |
Suffolk police force area | 8,061 | 7,786 | 7,954 | 7,109 | 7,125 | 9,679 | 20% |
The Office for National Statistics has said that recent increases in recorded violence reflect both better crime recording by police forces and a greater willingness of victims of domestic abuse to come forward.
The independent Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is not affected by police crime recording practice, shows that overall crime is down by more than a quarter since June 2010, and that violence has fallen by 27% over the same period.