SUSPECTS have been taken to court for little more than one in ten of the house burglaries reported in Barnsley over the last five years, the Chronicle can reveal.

And numbers charged or summonsed with offences - meaning they will end up in court - have been in decline during the last few years as the police service has had to deal with government-imposed cuts which have left front line services stretched.

The figures have been obtained as the South Yorkshire force has also begun to wrestle with a sharp increase in reported burglaries in the Barnsley area.

By the end of October there had been 1,165 reports of domestic burglaries, meaning a total of around 1,400 for the full year if that trend has continued, compared to 608 incidents last year.

But numbers of suspects going to court is still down on five years ago when the number of burglaries reported was around half the current figure.

Numbers being charged are up on last year, however, when only 29 people were sent to court following investigations.

Over the last five years, somewhere between 12 and 13 per cent of investigations have ended in court.

Coun Dave Griffin represents the Penistone West ward on Barnsley Council and has campaigned against police cuts in that area, which has seen a recent surge in crimes.

He said: “Residents require an effective way to contact police - the 101 system needs to be sound - and they need to feel burglars are going to get caught and taken through the court system.

“This evidence appears to show only a small minority end up that way.”

Not all investigations brought to a resolution end up with a suspect facing magistrates or a judge, however, and while so far this year 64 people have been sent to court, almost as many again have had investigations against them terminated as a result of ‘evidential difficulties’ identified either by police themselves or prosecutors who would have to make a case in court.

A handful of cases have seen offenders given cautions or being subject to ‘local resolutions’ where both parties in the incident reach an amicable agreement. In some cases, victims have been reluctant to assist police with prosecutions.

However that still leaves 947 domestic burglaries from the first ten months of this year which have been categorised as fully investigated with no suspect identified, meaning further police action will only occur if new evidence emerges.

After years of declining patronage, the Neighbourhood Watch organisation has recently seen increased interest from residents wanting to take positive action to guard against criminals targeting their homes.

To the west of Barnsley, where rural communities lost locally based police cover as a result of cuts in 2015 and 2016, there is a widespread belief that burglars have seized the opportunity to attack isolated premises in the knowledge that police are unlikely to be about.

Barnsley also lost its local CID department, meaning the detectives who traditionally investigate burglaries and those responsible for the crimes found themselves working from centralised ‘hubs’.

The way police categorise crimes and the outcomes of their investigations has changed over the last five years, with significant changes since April this year. However, most of the statistics compiled by the force pre-date that era.

No comment was available from South Yorkshire Police about the detection statistics.

***

SOUTH Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, Dr Alan Billings, has told councillors who act as a watchdog to his work that he is hopeful the force will get a ‘good’ rating when inspectors visit in 2018.

A report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary last year ranked the force as requiring improvement and it has been placed in that category again.

But Dr Billings has told councillors who make up the South Yorkshire Crime and Policing Panel, effectively a watchdog for his office, that he hopes improvements will result in the force getting a rating of ‘good’ next year.

Coun Dave Griffin, who sits on the panel, said the force had made good progress in understanding the demands it faces.

Current Chief Constable Stephen Watson has reversed some decisions taken by his predecessor David Crompton, such as axing neighbourhood policing, which some have blamed for an escalation in problems faced by residents.