Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, How many reports the police recorded of sexual offences against children under 16 in each local authority in (a) 2009 and (b) the last year for which figures are available.

The police recorded crime data that the Home Office receives from the police forces of England and Wales relate only to how many crimes are recorded and not how many reports are received. It is only possible to centrally provide figures for certain sexual offences that identify the age of the victim in statute, namely:

 Rape of a female child under 16
 Rape of a female child under 13
 Rape of a male child under 16
 Rape of a male child under 13
 Sexual assault on a female child under 13
 Sexual assault on a male child under 13
 Sexual activity involving a child under 13
 Sexual activity involving child under 16
 Sexual grooming (the victim must be under 16)

Data for these offences are provided at the community safety partnership (CSP) level in Tables A and F. Police recorded crime data are not wholly available at the local authority level although in most areas local authorities and CSPs are coterminous.

Data are provided for the financial year 2009/10 due to changes in offence codes in April 2009 and data for 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14 are provided for context (Tables B to E).

Recent increases in the overall number of recorded sexual offences have been attributed by the Office for National Statistics to a) the willingness of victims to come forward and report these crimes to the police, partly due to wider ‘operation Yewtree effect, where victims of sexual offences that are not directly connected to Yewtree are now reporting these offences to the police. and b) an improvement in crime recording by the police for these offences.

The information requested is also published quarterly as part of the police recorded crime open data tables and can be accessed in an unformatted list here):

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables
(see tables titled ‘Police recorded crime data by community safety partnership’).