Outer Rothwell: West Yorkshire Police fail to identify suspects for 56 burglaries in Leeds town, data shows
New data has found that police have failed to identify any suspects for 56 burglaries reported in an area of Leeds.
In residential streets around Outer Rothwell, including Wood Lane, there were 56 reported burglaries in 2021 and none were solved.
The research was carried out by Channel 4 Dispatches and found there were 167 areas in England and Wales where police had not identified a single suspect for a plethora of crimes including theft, burglary and robbery. 166 of these are covered by the Met Police.
Programme makers commissioned researchers to map police data from 2021 to 2023 to street level for offences where no suspect had been found, focusing on areas with at least 50 unsolved crimes.
In residential streets around Wood Lane in Rothwell there were 56 burglaries in 2021 and none were solved. West Yorkshire Police said it has made significant investment in projects that have brought down burglary levels and officers are committed to attending all home burglaries.
Of the 56, 44 were shed/outbuilding break-ins and there was eight actual dwelling burglaries. The force added that in 2023 there were 23 burglaries and in 2023 there were 34.
A spokesperson said: “While Rothwell has some officers who work specifically within its community to provide a familiar presence for people, it does not have a set number of allocated officers and is part of a larger Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT), which covers the Leeds South area.
“Police officers and staff who work within NPTs are deployed to the areas where they are needed the most, so communities can be provided with reassurance when they need it.”
The Home Office said it will recruit 13,000 more police community support officers and will “take a more active role to improve standards in policing so that charge rates increase”.
Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches aired on Channel 4 earlier this week.