Knife and gun crime in London both leapt by 20 per cent last year amid a surge in blade robberies, teenage homicides and firearms offending, official figures revealed today.
The Office for National Statistics said that 14,626 knife offences were recorded by police in the capital over the 12 months to the end of last December.
That was 2,481 more knife crimes than the 2022 total and meant that an average of 40 blade offences were committed each day in the capital last year.
There was also a big leap in gun crimes with 1,208 such offences during 2023, up by nearly 200 on the 1,010 recorded by police a year earlier.
Both statistics will prompt significant concern with the rise in knife offending driven by a 34 per cent increase in blade robberies, which totalled 8,956 in 2023.
There was also a 6 per cent rise in knife offences that either resulted in an injury or were carried out with the intent to commit serious harm. Knifepoint rapes and other sexual assaults totalled 193, slightly down on the 2022 figure of 208. But attempted murders with a blade were up 29 per cent from 49 in 2022 to 63 last year.
Knife killings also rose to 72, one more fatality than the previous year, knife killings rose by one, to 72, and included 18 teenage blade homicide victims.
Those killed including 16-year-old Rennell Charles, who was stabbed to death on his way to Kelmscott School in Walthamstow last May and Harry Pitman, 16, who was fatally knifed on the last day of the year after going to watch New Year fireworks on Primrose Hill with his friends.
Thursday’s figures also show that there has been a 38 per cent increase in knife crime in London since Mayor Sadiq Khan took office eight years ago.
The rise is the difference between the 9,086 knife crimes recorded in the capital in the year to the end of March 2016 and the 2023 total of 14,626 and equates to 5,540 extra blade crimes – an extra 15 per day – in the past year compared to the 2016 tally.
The issue of knife crime and the extent of offending in London has become a key issue in the Mayoral election campaign with Tory candidate Susan Hall accusing Mr Khan of failure.
The Mayor has responding by blaming government cuts for some of the problems and pointing out that injuries from violent crime to the under 25s have fallen.
