Sussex Police have recorded some of the best crime-busting figures in the South-East - but violence is still on the rise.

Total crime in the county rose by 0.3 per cent, compared with 4.7 per cent the previous years.

In the year to March 2001, burglaries fell by more than 11 per cent - a better figure than Kent, Surrey or Hampshire could manage - but violent crime rose by 2.9 per cent.

Car crime fell by 5.4 per cent.

The numbers relate to a period when sacked Paul Whitehouse was chief constable and when Home Secretary David Blunkett called on the police authority to take action to restore public confidence.

Acting Chief Constable Maria Wallis said: "We have put the brake on rising crime. Our 11 per cent drop in burglaries, for the second year running, is well above the national average.

"Our increase in recorded violent crime of 2.9 per cent was well below the national average of 4.3 per cent and, although we missed our 69 per cent target for violent crime detections, today's figures show that the 59 per cent detection rate we did achieve was well above the national average of 55 per cent."

Mrs Wallis said that from this weekend and for the first time, local crime performance figures for Sussex's nine policing divisions would be available via the Sussex Police web site at www.sussex.police.uk She said: "The good news is that we are already starting to see further significant improvements in Sussex Police performance since April.

"I am determined this will continue and that we will achieve greater consistency of performance across all our divisions.

"Last year Sussex was hit by an unusually high number of major crime inquiries and this workload did take its toll on our performance because it took so many police officers away from their day-to-day duties.

"We need to ensure we have the right balance between priority crimes and total crime."