Violent crime rises by 43% in three years on London Underground

Violent crime on the London Underground has risen by more than 43% in the past three years, figures have shown.

Data from British Transport Police (BTP) showed 2,838 reported incidents took place between November 2017 and September 2018. Between November 2015 and October 2016, there were 1,980.

King’s Cross St Pancras, one of the capital’s busiest stations, had the highest number of recorded offences. There were 1,339 incidents during the three-year period.

The London assembly, which published the findings, noted almost 11 million passengers travelled on Transport for London (TfL) services every day, “with very few of them ever experiencing or witnessing crime”.

The data, released after a request from Greater London Authority Conservatives, covered the period up to September last year because figures for October were not available.

Weapons offences have increased by 126% since 2015, from 42 to 95, while sexual attacks have risen from 925 to 1,047.

The figures also showed a 25% increase in the number of criminal offences recorded on the tube network, from 10,450 in 2015-16 to 13,101 in 2017-18.

The RMT union blamed government cuts to TfL’s budget for the increase.

“We now routinely have reports of stations being left unstaffed and the safety culture being ripped apart as London Underground is turned into a thugs’ paradise,” said Mick Cash, the RMT general secretary.

“Those cuts to staffing and budgets must be reversed and these appalling figures should serve as a wake-up call to those calling the shots.”

Between November 2017 and September 2018, Stratford was the scene of the highest number of violent crimes, followed by Oxford Circus.

Robin Smith, an assistant chief constable at BTP, said: “London has one of the busiest transport networks in the world and the chances of being a victim of crime remains incredibly low, with less than 10 crimes recorded for every million passenger journeys made.

“In the past year, crime involving a weapon has increased. However, it is important to bear in mind that these figures also include the many knives seized in our targeted, intelligence-led operations against knife crime.”

TfL funds more than 2,500 Metropolitan police, BTP and City of London police officers to patrol the capital’s transport network.

Susan Hall, a Conservative London assembly member, called on the mayor, Sadiq Khan, to cut the millions of what she called “City Hall waste” to provide more officers on London’s streets.