The leaflet from the Met Police said that planting them ‘close together’ could help amid a rising tide of burglaries in the capital.
A police force has urged UK households to plant 17 types of shrubs to fend off burglars. The leaflet from the Met Police said that planting them ‘close together’ could help amid a rising tide of burglaries in the capital.
The force has issued leaflets recommending a variety of plants that could to create a “natural defence against burglary”. The leaflet reads: “Planting particular shrubs (in their mature or semi-mature form) along garden walls and fences can make it harder for burglars to access your property or put them off completely.
“To maximise this effect, plant them close to each other.” Reacting to the new guidance, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, told The Times: “For all crime the Met’s clear-up rate is the worst in the country. The Met police needs to concentrate on the basics of catching criminals and less on gardening advice.”
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“Gardening advice is not going to help do that,” he stressed. A Met Police spokesperson defended the advice, saying: “We will continue to help prevent people from becoming victims while simultaneously cracking down on burglars and organised crime groups.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “As part of our mission to take back our streets we will restore neighbourhood policing in local communities by delivering 13,000 neighbourhood police and community support officers.
“The Home Office will take a more active role to improve standards in policing so that charge rates increase, more crimes are solved and justice is delivered for victims rebuilding confidence and trust in policing.”
According the Crime Survey for England and Wales, someone is actually less likely to be a victim of crime in London than they are across the country as a whole. In the capital, 14.9% of people experienced a crime either to their person or their household in the year ending September 2023.
Moneysupermarket said that while it found 123 postcodes where no customer reported a burglary within the last five years, “this does not mean that there have not been any burglaries in the last five years, but rather that any burglaries that did occur were not reported by our customers”.
But it added: “We do find plenty of very rural postcodes, where the true burglary rate is likely to be very low.” Some city centre locations also reported zero claims, but this is likely a result of the postcodes being dominated by commercial office buildings rather than residential households.