Issue 447  25th April 2026

Knife crime in England and Wales has dropped by 10%, new figures show. A total of 49,151 knife offences were logged by forces in England and Wales in 2025, down from 54,548 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The figure is lower than the 49,190 offences recorded in 2021/22, but higher than the 44,728 in the first year of the pandemic, 2020/21. This means the levels of police-recorded knife crime are now at their lowest since the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The majority of police forces in England and Wales (29 out of 44) recorded a year-on-year fall in incidents of knife crime in 2025, including the three largest: the Metropolitan Police, where offences dropped 17%; Greater Manchester, also down 17%; and West Midlands, down 15%. Nearly half of forces (20 out of 44) saw a fall in homicides, including the Met and Greater Manchester...

Officers are trialling new retail crime reporting technology designed to rapidly identify suspects as part of wider efforts to tackle shoplifting. The technology, which has been piloted in areas such as Lewisham and central London since January, allows retailers to submit reports and CCTV footage instantly. This gives officers immediate access to high‑quality evidence at the point of reporting and helps identify repeat offenders operating across boroughs. Since its rollout, the positive outcome rate – defined as an arrest, charge or conviction – is 21.4 per cent. That means more than one in five cases are being solved – well above the Met average of 14 per cent. It comes as the Met solved nearly double the number of shoplifting offences last year and made almost 50 per cent more arrests – rising by 1,800...

Waste criminals are running out of places to hide as the government launches its Digital Waste Tracking service to follow every piece of permitted waste across the country in real time. As part of its major crackdown on waste crime under the government’s Waste Crime Action Plan, new laws being laid in parliament will require businesses to create a real-time audit trail for the waste they handle.

At the moment, waste consignments are tracked using a largely paper based and outdated system that is overly bureaucratic for legitimate operators and fails to give law enforcement the vital intelligence they need to build cases against waste criminals. The new approach for tracking waste will provide faster, more reliable data, helping to identify suspicious activity and support enforcement bodies to target action against rogue operators breaking the law. It will also make it easier for waste producers and legitimate operators to meet their reporting requirements. The service will become mandatory for permitted waste receiving sites in England, Northern Ireland and Wales from October 2026 and Scotland in January 2027, giving businesses time to prepare for the new requirements. Phase 1 will apply to around 12,000 permitted waste receiving sites. As the service expands, over 100,000 operators are set to be in scope...

Cocaine, cannabis, laughing gas and prescription pills are being offered for sale in mini-marts on UK High Streets, a BBC investigation can reveal. They were readily offered to our undercover researchers who secretly filmed in shops across four neighbouring West Midlands towns. One street we visited was described as "lawless" by an anonymous law enforcement source. Just a few miles away, in a town where we found illegal drugs being sold in shops, legitimate businesses told us they had been intimidated by gangs - and witnessed knife and gun violence.

Across the country, shopfronts are being exploited by organised criminal gangs that have gained a foothold pushing illegal drugs, say both the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI). We analysed dozens of recent local news reports as part of our ongoing investigation into criminal activity on UK High Streets. From Bideford in Devon, to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, to Belfast in Northern Ireland - we found that drugs, including crystal meth and heroin, had been found in more than 70 shops and linked premises. Responding to our findings in the West Midlands and more widely, a senior Labour MP is now calling on the government to act urgently. "We can't restore our High Streets unless we take out the cancer of organised crime," says Liam Byrne, chair of the Business and Trade Committee. The government is working with police, the NCA and Trading Standards to "take the strongest possible action against these criminal businesses", a spokesperson for the Home Office said. West Midlands Police said it would always work with partners "to act on complaints about illegal drugs sales, anti-social behaviour, and crime and disorder"...

Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) is seeking more than $167 million (£124m) plus costs over the Serious Fraud Office’s now-abandoned investigation into the Kazakh mining company. The ‘phase two’ trial, before Mr Justice Waksman, follows the 2023 High Court judgment which found that the SFO was a ‘vital participant in the overall wrongdoing’ of now retired solicitor Neil Gerrard whom it ‘actively encouraged’ in relation to an inquiry into ENRC. This trial, which is listed for six weeks, will deal with quantum. The company claims losses in relation to legal fees and other costs incurred in defending itself and employees which it says total around $76m and around $90m over increased borrowing costs caused by the SFO’s criminal investigation.

In written submissions, ENRC said the sums it spent ‘defending the [criminal investigation] are dwarfed by the potential fines and penalties it might have faced had it been charged’. Nathan Pillow KC told the court ENRC was seeking ‘compensation for the consequences of the criminal investigation that you decided in Phase 1 and Phase 1a would not have been started but for the misconduct of the defendants Dechert and the Serious Fraud Office. Your Lordship is assessing at this trial the loss that has flowed from the SFO’s unlawful conduct committed, as you have found, by some of its senior officials’...