It's Hallowe'en so we get some nonsense about rural crime from the Country Land & Business Association...

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We're always that October and November are peak months for burglary - lots of stuff about the clocks going back and the nights drawing in. However, this applies everywhere not just in that mystic place "the countryside" - however the Country Land & Business Association thinks otherwise:

Again sadly, rural areas present the greatest opportunity for thieves. Isolated houses and buildings, less lighting, fewer witnesses and the ease of being able to watch the owner’s movements all add up to a very attractive target for thieves. 

Except this simply isn't true. Rates of house burglary are much lower in rural areas compared to urban areas. To help understand this here are the country's top "burglary hotspots":

LS23, Bramley, Gamble Hill, Moorside, Rodley and Swinnow
BD12, Low Moor, Oakenshaw and Wyke in Bradford
N12, North Finchley
M30, Eccles
RM3, Harold Wood, Harold Hill, Noak Hill in Romford
SW12, Balham, Clapham South, Hyde Farm in London
LS18, Horsforth in Leeds
UB3, Hayes, Harlington in Middlesex
SE22, East Dulwich, Peckham Rye, Loughborough Junction, Herne Hill
LS28, Calverley, Farsley, Pudsey, Stanningley.

There you go - Inner London, Leeds and Bradford (and some place where they make pastry cakes with currants in). Not a rural place in sight.

In the Skipton & Ripon constituency (as rural as it gets really) there were 548 burglaries over the past year - that's 45.7 per month. In October and November last year there were 41 and 36 respectively - below the average.

By comparison in Leeds West (which contains the place on top of that burglary hotspot list) that average is 125.6 per month (1507 burglaries) nearly triple the rate in "the countryside". Again October and November at 104 and 109 respectively are below the average.

I also suspect that, if we were to exclude the two towns of Skipton and Ripon, the remaining countryside would have very little crime at all.

I've no problem with good advice about security - locking doors, putting tools away, marking property and so forth - but it simply isn't true that crime is going to rise "when the clocks go back" (it might but it might not) and it certainly isn't true that rural areas are targeted by thieves.

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