How many crimes are going unsolved in YOUR street? Find out with our search tool – as interactive map names and shames worst-performing police forces
More than eight out of ten crimes went unsolved last year, a Daily Mail investigation suggests.
Police last year opened 3.9million crime cases, yet our stark analysis today reveals 3.3m were closed with either no suspect ever being identified or coppers unable to prosecute them.
Sex offenders and thieves were among the criminals who evaded justice last year.
Using the data we uncovered, the Daily Mail has built a postcode search tool laying bare the situation in your neighbourhood.
It reveals how many offences actually resulted in action being taken in your LSOA – tiny geographical areas home to around 2,000 people, typically consisting of just a few streets.
Action taken can mean a suspect being hauled to court, or being cautioned by the police, given a fine or being made to attend an awareness or education course.
The widget, available to use below, also lists the types of crimes reported to police last year that had an ‘outcome’, and how many occurred.
No crime was solved in almost 900 of approximately 34,000 LSOAs in England and Wales in the year ending May 2025, according to our analysis of Police UK figures.
Chalk Farm and Primrose Hill, a suburb of Camden, north London, topped the league table, with all 150 reported crimes going unsolved.
It was followed by the Bromley Common and Holwood area of Bromley (133 crimes) and the Marshalswick West region of St Albans in Hertfordshire (114).
At the other end of the scale, 14 LSOAs had a 100 per cent solve rate, although none saw more than five crimes reported.
When broken down to the 44 police forces instead of LSOAs, all but one – Avon and Somerset Constabulary – solved a quarter or fewer of the crimes reported.
The Met Police, the largest force in the country, came bottom of the rankings. Cops working in London solved just 8 per cent of the 727, 313 crimes reported to them.
West Mercia (89 per cent) and Hertfordshire Constabulary (88 per cent) followed in second and third, respectively.
Police may be unable to charge someone because of a lack of evidence, the Ministry of Justice says.
Police must co-operate with the Crown Prosecution Service to determine if there is a viable case for the suspect to be charged.
To do this, two criteria must be met – there must be sufficient evidence against the suspect and a prosecution should be in the public interest.
Of the 14 major crime types, our analysis found half had an unsolved rate of over 90 per cent.
Behind theft (98.7 per cent) was vehicle crime (97.1), which might include theft of or damage to a vehicle as well as pinching belongings from a vehicle.
Just 32.8 per cent of drug crimes, meanwhile, went unsolved.
Experts claimed the staggering findings lay bare the extraordinary state of disrepair of policing, with the watchdog earlier this year warning that forces lack the resource and time to investigate crimes properly.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services said workloads of officers had increased by a third since 2015.
Its report also claimed the police-recorded crime rates per 1,000 people had jumped by 44 per cent in a decade.
And although overall police numbers are increasing, they aren’t rising in line with the soaring population.
Brian Booth, deputy national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales told the Daily Mail: ‘Every day our police officers kit up for a shift not knowing what they’ll face or whether they’ll come home in one piece.
‘They run towards danger, not away from it, dealing with trauma, violence, and the very worst moments in people’s lives, often without thanks or the support they need.
‘Policing places exceptional demands on its people and these figures do not reflect a lack of effort but rather a service pushed to its limits.
‘If we want better outcomes for victims and safer communities, we need increased investment in policing.’
Chris Hobbs, an ex-Met Police officer, said: ‘Morale in the Met is completely on the floor – absolutely, no doubt about it, [it’s at an] all-time low.
‘Solving crimes is both a resource and bureaucracy issue.
‘Police aren’t making many arrests because officers spend so much time doing other things that they shouldn’t be doing.
‘When I was a young officer I’d be in and out of the station in one or two hours after I made an arrest, now when you make one that’s you done for the day.’
It comes after the Met this week announced it would be axing nearly half of its front desk services across the capital to try and balance its £260million budget shortfall.
The moves wipes out a pledge made by mayor Sadiq Khan and the force to have one counter accessible 24 hours a day in each borough.
At the end of last year, Keir Starmer pledged a ‘named, contactable’ police officer for every neighbourhood in England and Wales by the next election.
The move looks to bolster the party’s 2024 election manifesto promise to put 13,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’ across the nation.
It comes after a Daily Mail analysis last year revealed that neighbourhood policing is almost extinct in parts of the country, with just one for every 11,000 residents in the worst-affected forces.
Greater Manchester Police have not provided data to Police UK since 2019 so their figures are not included in our analysis.
To calculate the amount of ‘unsolved’ crimes, the Daily Mail combined the numbers from the ‘Investigation complete; no suspect identified’ and ‘Unable to prosecute suspect’ datasets provided by Police UK.
