Police-recorded religious and race hate crime rises in England and Wales

Police-recorded hate crime in England and Wales has risen for the first time in three years – including increases in both racially and religiously motivated offences.

Hate crimes targeted at Muslims were up by almost a fifth, with the Home Office noting a spike in these offences after the Southport murders last summer and the riots which followed.

While there was a drop by 18% in the number of religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people, the department cautioned that the overall figures exclude those recorded by Britain’s biggest police force, the Metropolitan Police, because of a change in their crime recording system.

The Home Office said the Met recorded 40% of all religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the last year.

There were 137,550 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales including the Met, but the department said the change in recording means this is not directly comparable year-on-year.

Overall, excluding the Met, there were 115,990 hate crime offences recorded by police across the two nations in the year ending March 2025.

This was up 2% from 113,166 for the previous 12 months.

Race hate crimes rose by 6% from 77,901 in the year to March 2024 to 82,490 in the year to this March.

Religiously motivated hate crimes were up 3% from 6,973 to 7,164 – to their highest annual total on record.

Anti-Muslim hate crime rose from 2,690 offences recorded in the 12 months to March last year to 3,199 offences in the year ending March 2025.

The Home Office said there was a “clear spike in these offences in August 2024, which coincides with the Southport murders on the 29 July and the subsequent disorder across several English towns and cities”.

Excluding the Met, religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people and recorded by the other forces in England and Wales fell by 18%, from 2,093 to 1,715.

Since the pandemic the total number of police-recorded hate crimes peaked at 128,485 in the year to March 2022 but overall numbers had been falling in the years since.

The latest figures show falls in hate crimes based on sexual orientation – down 2% to 19,127 from 18,702 and disability hate crimes which decreased by 8% from 11,131 to 10,224.

There was also a fall in transgender hate crimes by 11% from 4,258 to
3,809, the second consecutive annual fall.