Burglaries, fraud and robberies at knifepoint have risen steeply, in the first sign that the recession is fuelling an increase in crime.

A rise in the number of house break-ins and fraud and forgery offences in the three months to September suggests that the decline in overall crime levels recorded in recent years is coming to an end. Domestic burglaries rose 4 per cent in the year while fraud and forgery cases went up 16 per cent, the latest official crime statistics showed yesterday.

The figures come months after a leaked memo to Gordon Brown warned that the Home Office feared that the economic downturn would result in an increase in crime.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced that an emergency “burglary summit” would be held in the next two weeks in an attempt to halt and reverse the substantial rise in house break-ins. Her top civil servant at the Home Office has already e-mailed the police and crime divisions of the department to tell them that they must improve their performance.

The increase in burglaries is the first sustained rise since the last recession in the mid-Nineties. Criminologists have expected that as unemployment rises, there will be increases in burglaries, fraud and car crime – the offences that make up most of the overall crime figures for England and Wales.

Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, said: “It has long been recognised that trends in economic growth and recession have a tendency to impact on crime. These figures add to the sense that the economic downturn is having a real effect on the crime level.”

He added: “It seems unlikely that yet another crackdown will have much effect on what, in reality, are much more deeply rooted social and economic processes.”

Ms Smith denied that there was an inevitable link between an economic downturn and the rise in break-ins. However, her decision to hold a meeting on burglaries with police, Neighbourhood Watch, Age Concern and major DIY stores next month highlighted her concern at the potential political danger facing the Government if the upward trend continues as the recession deepens. She said: “It’s a fact that there’s been an increase and that’s worrying.”

The meeting was intended to ensure that everyone was doing their bit to keep burglary and other thefts down, she said. A burglary prevention campaign, backed by a special fund, would begin next month, she added.

Ms Smith said: “There will be a small minority of criminals who think they can take advantage in tough times. Let me tell them now, they can’t and they won’t.”

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The statistics show the harsh consequence of Gordon Brown’s economic downturn. This is made much worse because the Home Secretary clearly has no idea how to deal with this credit-crunch crime wave.” Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “There is now clear evidence of rising crime as the recession bites.”

In recent years huge falls in the numbers of crimes such as burglary and car theft have helped to cut overall crime levels. Unless the Government can reverse yesterday’s figures it faces the prospect of substantial increases in overall crime in the run-up to a general election.

The figures show that robberies at knifepoint rose by 18 per cent from 3,551 to 4,207 in the three months to September last year compared with the same period in 2007.

House break-ins recorded by police were up by 4 per cent to 69,700 and fraud and forgery were up by 16 per cent to 43,800.

Violence against the person was down 6 per cent and violence against the person with an injury decreased by down 8 per cent to 110,000. Sexual crimes fell 7 per cent to 13,400.

The fall in violent crime was overshadowed by the continuing row over the exclusion from the latest figures of the category covering the most serious violent crimes.

These figures will not be published until Karen Dunnell, the National Statistician, believes that they are accurate and robust.

The category was withdrawn after it emerged last year that 18 forces, including some of the biggest, such as Thames Valley and the Metropolitan Police, had been wrongly recording attacks where serious harm had been intended but not inflicted on a victim.

Police chiefs said that the underreporting in that category occurred honestly because some forces found the Home Office official guidance ambiguous.

The forces asked to look again at their figures, named following a freedom of information request, were: the Metropolitan Police, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Humberside, Kent, Lancashire, Norfolk, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk and Thames Valley.

Ian Johnston, the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers on statistics, played down the significance of the omission.

“What this does do is affect a small subset – a very important one indeed – that represents about 2 per cent of overall violent crime,” he said.

Overall crime recorded by the 43 police forces in England and Wales fell by 3 per cent to 1.2 million offences in the three months to September last year compared with the same period in 2007. But the figures for property crimes committed in the second and third quarters highlight a trend that is worrying ministers.

Robbery, house break-ins, burglaries at commercial premises and thefts from and of vehicles were all up. There could be seasonal reasons for some of these increases in the summer months so the Home Office will be waiting anxiously to discover if the trends continued in the autumn and winter of last year.

Separate figures from the British Crime Survey, based on interviews carried out with 46,000 people over 16 in the year to September last year, showed that the overall level of crime was stable. About 24 per cent of women said they had been the victim of a serious sexual assault or an attempted serious sexual assault since the age of 16.

Figures for violent crime, vandalism, domestic burglary and theft from the person were largely unchanged.

The interviews do not include under16s, or crimes against commercial premises or those who are living in communal accommodation.

Violence in the home

— Three in ten women, an estimated 4.8 million, and two in ten men, an estimated 3.2 million, say that they have been victims of domestic abuse since the age of 16

— Nonsexual abuse by a partner or family member fell between 2004-05 and 2007-08. Overall rates of sexual assault have, however, remained broadly stable over the same period

— Almost 24 per cent of women say that they have been the victim of a serious sexual assault or an attempted serious sexual assault since the age of 16

— Almost half of women said that they had been the victim of a serious or attempted serious sexual assault in the past year

— Fifty-three per cent of offenders in cases of serious assault of females were partners and 12 per cent strangers

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