A councillor has branded figures detailing the number of reported burglaries that went unsolved in the borough as “alarming”.

Ilford Recorder: Cllr Paul CanalCllr Paul Canal (Image: Archant)

Bridge Ward’s Cllr Paul Canal said tackling the crime “has to be made a priority” after police statistics showed 91 per cent of burglaries went unsolved in the past year – no arrests were made for 2,280 of 2,492 residential and non-residential incidents.

The Conservative group leader, who has had “major issues” with burglaries in his ward, said the current approach to catching culprits was “not effective”.

“The police have to devote more of their resources to tackling it,” he said. “The budget needs to be used in a way that targets crimes that affect ordinary people.

“The vast majority are committed by the same people, so we have got to jail repeat offenders.”

The councillor also called on courts to hand out harsher punishments to people committing burglary.

“The courts have an obligation to protect ordinary people,” he added.

Despite the numbers, which were rerecorded between July 2014 and July 2015, Redbridge Police’s borough crime manager Det Ch Insp Neil Lemon said the overall number of reported burglaries are on the decline.

He said: “The borough is thoroughly committed to tackling burglary and has reduced the number of offences by 31pc – 1,130 fewer burglary victims – since 2011/12 and is currently recording a reduction of 13.1pc on last year.

“The borough continues to invest significant resources in tackling the crime including a specialist Forensic Conversion Team based at Barkingside who target offenders across east London.”

He added: “Burglary has always been a particularly difficult crime to detect and Redbridge has a current detection rate of 8.3pc. This compares favourably with a detection rate of 7.2pc last year and 7.5pc in 2011/12.”

Det Ch Insp Lemon’s comments come after the borough’s police launched an overt filming campaign last month, placing cameras in burglary hotspots, and after growing uncertainty over possible cuts to PCSOs.

He added: “Despite much conjecture, there has been no decision made on the future PCSOs and there are currently 42 serving on Safer Neighbourhood Teams across Redbridge.”