HATE CRIMES RECORDED IN ENGLAND AND WALES RISE 7% TO NEARLY 147,000

Police forces in England and Wales recorded 146,825 hate crimes in the year to March 2026, a 7% rise on the previous year's figure of nearly 140,000, according to Home Office data. The Home Office said the increase reflected "a genuine increase" in such offences, driven largely by crimes motivated by race and religion, while hate crimes linked to sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity were unchanged or falling. Policing Minister Sarah Jones described the figures as "a stark warning that hatred continues to blight our communities". She pointed to what she called the biggest reforms to policing in more than 200 years, alongside what she said was record funding to protect Muslim and Jewish people and places of worship.

Racially motivated offences made up around 74% of all recorded hate crimes, with religiously motivated offences accounting for roughly 8%, Home Office figures show. Religious hate crimes rose 13% to 11,419 offences, including a 15% rise in offences targeting Muslims, from 4,479 to 5,132, and a 10% rise in those targeting Jewish people, with a notable rise in Islamophobic offences recorded in September. Where victims' ethnicity was recorded, around a third were identified as Asian and a quarter as Black. The Home Office said offences against white victims were likely to include xenophobic abuse directed at people not born in the UK.

The Home Office attributed the rise largely to an increase in public order offences such as intimidation and abuse, alongside violent and vandalism offences recorded under the hate crime category. Officials noted that the growth in hate crime offences over the past two years had outpaced the broader trend in violent and public order offences, which they said pointed to a genuine underlying rise rather than changes in recording practice. The increase marks the first rise in recorded hate crime in three years, according to earlier reporting on the figures.