As part of a statutory performance indicator, data on the number of domestic violence incidents reported to the police in England and Wales is collected annually. The most recent available figures for 2006-07 were collected under the police performance assessment framework.
The figures, broken down by (a) rural and (b) urban police force areas in England and Wales in accordance with the ACORN (a classification of residential neighbourhoods) are outlined in the following table.
Force area Number reported Rural Cambridgeshire 7,501 Cumbria 4,372 Devon and Cornwall 22,828 Durham 8,163 Dyfed Powys1 3,871 Gloucestershire 8,237 Lincolnshire1 4,912 Norfolk 7,893 North Wales1 10,188 North Yorkshire1 5,986 Suffolk 4,314 West Mercia 12,799 Wiltshire 6,600 Total 107,664 Urban Cheshire 5,161 City of London2 96 Cleveland 6,083 Greater Manchester2 64,727 Hertfordshire 10,926 Lancashire 22,217 Merseyside2 25,568 Metropolitan Police2 69,438 Northumbria 24,277 Nottinghamshire 17,534 South Wales 15,421 South Yorkshire 17,825 Staffordshire 18,659 Surrey 11,742 West Midlands2 40,233 West Yorkshire 34,481 Total 384,388 1 Most rural 2 Most urban
From the information collected centrally on recorded crime, it is not possible to identify recorded cases of domestic violence. Such offences are not specifically defined by law and details of the individual circumstances of offences are not collected.
The British Crime Survey (BCS) routinely provides information on the number of incidents of domestic violence in England and Wales but it is not possible to break the statistics down by police force area.