CRIME in the Dyfed-Powys Police area rose in the 18 months up to December last year, figures have shown.

Public order offences, burglaries, theft, violence against the person and sexual offences spiked between May and August last year, and again in October.

The statistics are contained in a force report going before the Dyfed-Powys Police and Crime Panel at a meeting on May 18.

The report said the rise in total crime was largely driven by violence against the person incidents — a broad category of offences including assault, battery and, more recently, malicious communication.

“July 2017 experienced the highest monthly crime volume since crime recording standards were introduced back in 2002,” said the report.

But it added that efforts to accurately capture incident numbers, combined with recording changes introduced last May, also accounted for the total crime increase.

The report revealed that between January and December 2017 there were: 9,252 violence against the person offences, up 26 percent on the previous year; 5,221 theft offences, up 21 per cent; 4,196 arson and criminal damage offences, up eight per cent; 1,766 drug offences, down 14 per cent; 1,753 burglary offices, up 14 per cent; 1,214 sexual offences, up 19 per cent; 1,166 public order offences, up 34 per cent; 943 vehicle offences, up five per cent; 638 miscellaneous crimes against society, such as obscene publication, up 14 percent and 152 possession of a weapon, down four per cent.

The rises and falls regularly tallied with most other Wales and England police forces.

And, like other forces, Dyfed-Powys Police deals with a large amount of non-crime matters, representing 81 per cent of all calls to its control centre.

The report also found that anti-social behaviour levels were down by eight per cent in 2017, but that cyber-crime levels were increasing “significantly”.

It added that three-quarters of people who responded to a survey said they felt the force was doing a good or excellent job, but was this was for the 12 months up to September 2017.

Meanwhile, an inspection of Dyfed-Powys Police by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate concluded that the force was good at keeping people safe.

Its report, published in March this year, also said that improvements were needed in protecting vulnerable people and that an understanding was required about why domestic abuse arrest rates had fallen.

“Dyfed-Powys Police is good at investigating crimes but there remains room for improvement,” it added.