Burglaries in Putney: the FACTS

Putney's Conservative MP has been at it again: scaremongering about burglaries in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields in her latest Putney SW15 report - exactly the way she did a few months ago in the same column.

I've taken a while to respond to her distortions because I wanted to wait for the Metropolitan Police to publish their October crime figures before debunking - again - Miss Greening's claims.

But the table above shows that in October, compared to the month before, in only two out of six Putney wards was the burglary rate up at all - by less than half of one percent in both cases. In contrast, burglary fell by significantly more in Roehampton and Thamesfield. Burglaries neither increased nor reduced in Southfields or West Hill.

Overall, yet again, burglary fell - it didn't rise as Miss Greening claimed.

And without blinding you with statistics, the following table shows just how significantly better we are doing in Putney on burglary - the change over 12 months as opposed to just the one month snapshot above. In every single Putney ward, burglaries are down: in the cases of Roehampton, Thamesfield and West Hill down massively:



Why is Miss Greening claiming one thing when the facts show the opposite? I think I understand how she's got it so wrong: burglaries in the rest of the borough, especially Battersea, are up, and the police may have briefed her about borough trends rather than Putney's. But she's paid to know her facts about Putney - and self-evidently she does not.

Don't take my word for it. Here is the Metropolitan Police's local crime database, open to anyone to check for themselves. Roll your mouse over any of the Putney wards - the six areas on the left of the map of the borough, and the crime figures for each appears on the right. Remember that these are figures provided by the Met Police themselves. And the Met reports to Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, not the Labour government.

We should all remain vigilant about crime and we can never have too many cautionary messages on preventing burglaries. But we can certainly do without mistruths and scaremongering from a politician on the prowl for votes. Here are the overall crime stats for October: