I fully agree with Techer Jones' criticism of Donna Jones' report, distributed at taxpayers' expense with Council Tax bills (Chronicle, Letters, April 2). Her reports have always been self-promotion, giving little by way of an objective picture of the state of crime and policing in the county.
As usual, Ms Jones has cherry-picked the statistics, though she has worked harder this time and opted to give figures averaged over multiple years. All crime is said to have fallen by 11 per cent. Unfortunately, the timescale is not clear as the report says "since 2022" in one place and "last two years" in another. Last year's report used figures published by the ONS (Crime in England and Wales: Police Force Area data tables) and covered the year to September 2024. The ONS figures for the year to September 2025 are available; why didn't she use them? Is it because they say recorded crime in Hampshire (excluding fraud) fell by just 1 per cent? That's a little worse than the 2 per cent fall recorded for England and Wales as a whole.
Either these reports should be paid for, in Ms Jones' case, by the Conservative Party, or, better, standards should be set regarding the use of statistics so voters do get a clear picture.
Richard Evans,
Fordington Avenue,
Fulflood,
Winchester
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