Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an estimate of the average time taken in theft cases between the report of the theft and a charge being made in each year since 2012.

The Home Office collects information on the length of time it takes to assign an outcome, including an outcome of charge/summons, for offences recorded by the police in England and Wales.

Information on the median number of days taken to assign a charge/summons outcome, broken down by offence group (including theft offences), are published ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales’ since March 2018 in table 4.3 here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-statistics

For the year ending December 2022, the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows the number of Theft offences down 47% when compared with the year ending March 2010, to 2.6 million incidents.