THE “largest ever” survey of its kind of rural areas of England and Wales has revealed that crime costs their communities an “unprecedented £800m”.

A survey of more 17,000 people living and working in such areas by the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) suggests the true cost of crime in these communities is “21 times higher than previous figures” and “dwarfs earlier estimates”.

The survey also indicates that “farmers and hard-pressed young families” are the most frequent victims, with the average cost of those crimes to a household being over £2,500 and for a business over £4,000.

Moreover, the network added, there appears to be “a vicious circle” of low expectations, leading to “chronic under-reporting”, “anger”, “frustration and worry”. The result is “increasing fear of crime” and “significantly lower satisfaction levels in the police than the national average”.

Julia Mulligan, chair of the NRCN, said: “Our report comes at a critical time when the structure and funding for policing are being fundamentally reassessed. Some of the findings in this report make uncomfortable reading but it is vitally important for the reality of rural crime to be fully acknowledged and acted upon.

“Its actual scale is clearly much greater than we had previously known; £800m is a big number. The low satisfaction rates also need to be a wake-up call for police forces in rural areas and everything should be done to harness the opportunities presented. Good, accessible local policing is central to this and I believe police forces which significantly shrink their local teams in rural areas do so at their peril.”

Richard Buer, NFU group secretary for the Alton and Petersfield Branch, said burglary and theft in rural areas in the district are commonplace. As a result, he explained, people are becoming more aware of the risk of crime.

“We are notified of many thefts in East Hampshire for both farming and domestic property that we insure,” he said. “We regularly have ATVs, workshop tools, and chainsaws and strimmers stolen, costing (insurer) NFU Mutual millions of pounds nationally.

“Farmers in East Hampshire have become much more security conscious and have installed extra physical security and electronic security such as alarms and CCTV.

“A few years ago we had a bad run on tractor thefts but these have reduced as farmers are now registering the vehicles and some are adding trackers or immobilisers for which NFU Mutual gives a discount. Manufacturers are also improving the security on new tractors.”

The NRCN survey identified that:

l Financial impact of crime on rural economy is significant – costing £800 million, equivalent to £200 for every household in the countryside.

l Fear of crime is also increasing – 39 per cent of rural people are very or fairly worried about becoming a victim of crime, compared to 19 per cent nationally.

l And 32 per cent of respondents are more fearful of becoming victims of crime than five years ago, compared to only 3 per cent who are less fearful.

l Rural businesses are the most fearful of becoming victims of crime, with 51 per cent very or fairly fearful, closely followed by younger families.

l Low satisfaction rates of police performance in rural areas – just 39 per cent of rural people rate the police as good (32.4 per cent) or excellent (6.3 per cent). Among rural businesses this figure was just 32 per cent. Those figures compare to 63 per cent nationally who think the police are doing a good job (53 per cent good and 10 per cent excellent), showing rural communities have a significantly lower satisfaction rate than their urban counterparts.

l Crime is under reported in rural areas – more than one in four (27 per cent) did not report the last crime of which they were a victim. This means Home Office figures of 294,000 rural crimes between April 2014 and May 2015 “could be incorrect” and the actual number of crimes could be “as high as 403,000”.

l Two issues of greatest concern to the rural community were road safety (63 per cent) and fly-tipping, which is now a civil offence (61 per cent).