Derbyshire bucks hate crime trend after EU referendum

Police figures from across the country have shown which areas were most affected by a rise in hate crime in the months following the Brexit vote in June.

And while Nottinghamshire has the second highest rise in the UK, Derbyshire had only an eight per centre rise in recorded crimes between July and September 2016.

Only four forces in the UK saw a drop in hate crimes, while 32 forces said they had the biggest single quarterly rise in the months following the Brexit vote, since records began in 2012.

In 2015-16 Derbyshire had 537 incidents in total, compared to 911 in Nottinghamshire and 299 in Lincolnshire.

Police forces in England and Wales can class five types of racially or religiously aggravated offences as hate crimes including assaults, harassment, public fear, alarm or distress, and other criminal damage. Some forces can identify other types of offences as hate crimes which may affect the numbers. Nottinghamshire Police, for instance, classified some attacks against women as 'misogony' hate crimes last year. These accounted for about two recorded crimes per month.

In June last year a report by analysed data from interviews with hate crime perpetrators and determined a number of key hate crime 'influencers' on Twitter, and placed the most prevalent areas outside of London as Birmingham, then Manchester and the Northeast, and then Nottingham and Sheffield.

Shahid Malik of the Muslim victim support group Tell Mama charity said there had been an: "explosion of anti-Muslim hate both online and on our streets".

He added: "With the backdrop of the Brexit vote and the spike in racist incidents that seems to be emerging, the government should be under no illusions: things could quickly become extremely unpleasant for Britain’s minorities.

"So today, more than ever, we need our government, our political parties and of course our media to act with the utmost responsibility and help steer us towards a post-Brexit Britain where xenophobia and hatred are utterly rejected."

UKIP leader Paul Nuttall has claimed soaring hate crime figures are "fabricated", according to the Mirror.

Police forces mark national rise in hate crimes

Here is the full list of hate crimes in the third quarter of 2016 (Forces which recorded the highest quarterly figures since April 2012 are marked with an asterisk).

:: Dorset 104* (up 100%)

:: Nottinghamshire 189* (up 75%)

:: North Yorkshire 64* (up 68%)

:: West Mercia 247* (up 64%)

:: Devon and Cornwall 220* (up 63%)

:: Leicestershire 213* (up 60%)

:: Kent 277* (up 60%)

:: Lincolnshire 78* (up 59%)

:: Humberside 140* (up 57%)

:: Dyfed-Powys 35* (up 52%)

:: Northumbria 394* (up 48%)

:: West Yorkshire 1,013* (up 46%)

:: Essex 376* (up 41%)

:: Wiltshire 134* (up 38%)

:: Suffolk 123* (up 37%)

:: British Transport Police 620* (up 34%)

:: Hampshire 463* (up 33%)

:: Sussex 385* (up 32%)

:: Hertfordshire 266* (up 30%)

:: Cleveland 159* (up 29%)

:: West Midlands 923* (up 27%)

:: Norfolk 130* (up 25%)

:: Gwent 77 (up 22%)

:: North Wales 56 (up 22%)

:: Lancashire 128 (up 21%)

:: Metropolitan Police 3,356* (up 20%)

:: Thames Valley 286* (up 20%)

:: Avon and Somerset 449* (up 19%)

:: Merseyside 477* (up 19%)

:: Greater Manchester 1,033* (up 19%)

:: Cheshire 195* (up 18%)

:: Durham 66 (up 16%)

:: Cumbria 50 (up 14%)

:: South Wales 276* (up 10%)

:: Cambridgeshire 179* (up 9%)

:: Derbyshire 117 (up 8%)

:: Staffordshire 237* (up 6%)

:: Warwickshire 106* (up 6%)

:: Bedfordshire 133* (up 6%)

:: Northamptonshire 79 (up 4%)

:: South Yorkshire 225 (down 1%)

:: Gloucestershire 55 (down 4%)

:: Surrey 137 (down 7%)

:: City of London 25 (down 7%)

:: Total: 14,295* (up 27%)