Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the crime detection rate was (a) nationally, (b) in London and (c) in Kingston and Surbiton constituency in the latest period for which figures are available.

There was a significant change in the methodology used to record detections to the new outcomes framework introduced in April 2013. The new outcomes framework includes a broader range of “outcomes” for crimes dealt with by the police. This provides greater transparency on how crimes are resolved when compared with the former detections framework which only covered a subset of the new outcomes and, therefore, of the ways crimes are "resolved".

Information on the new outcomes framework and data for England and Wales were published by the Home Office in its “Crime Outcomes in England and Wales 2014/15” bulletin, alongside the number of outcomes in each police force area. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-2014-to-2015

Figures for year ending March 2015 for England and Wales and the Metropolitan Police are shown in the table provided for all outcomes under the new framework. These show how crimes recorded in 2014/15 were dealt with. It is not possible to provide data for Kingston and Surbiton constituency as outcomes data are collected at police force area level.

Care needs to be taken when making comparisons of crime outcomes between police forces as different police forces use outcomes in different ways and will have a different mix of crimes to deal with. In addition, the figures for the Metropolitan Police are only available between December 2014 and March 2015, so a greater proportion of crimes from this more recent period will remain under investigation.