POLICE chiefs admit there were more than DOUBLE the number of stabbings and knife incidents than previously thought after a crime reporting glitch.

Officers across Sussex have to report serious incidents to the Home Office when a knife has been used to commit crime or injured someone.

But the box they had to tick was “semi hidden” because it was so low down on the form that they often missed it or did not know the option was there.

The error was found and new figures reveal that knife crime has risen in the past few years, from 665 incidents in 2016 to 827 last year.

Previously, the number was recorded at 296 incidents in 2016 and 305 incidents last year.

Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne and Deputy Chief Constable Jo Shiner discussed the statistics at a performance and accountability meeting last week.

Ms Shiner spoke after the high profile Operation Sceptre campaign against knife crime across the country.

She said figures for those found in possession of knives across the county had remained very similar over the past three years, but the figures for “knife enabled crime”– where criminals had used the weapon – had gone up.

The evidence has also been borne out “anecdotally” across other services, such as at accident and emergency and ambulance call-outs to knife incidents.

She said: “When there is a crime which is a knife-enabled crime, then there is a box officers need to tick in order to positively say a knife was involved.

“But it’s at a really granular level that that box was almost semi-hidden. So we are putting that right. If you look at the figures which would be corrected had that box been ticked, then we would be mid-table with our most similar forces around knife crime.”

Mrs Bourne and Ms Shiner discussed the topic as part of Operation Sceptre, a week-long campaign of combating knife crime.

It saw police visiting schools, carrying out searches on suspects, and setting up amnesty bins for knives to be handed in and destroyed.

Meanwhile in Brighton there was a metal detector arch set up at the railway station and police cadets went into shops to see if businesses were selling knives to under 18s.

Ms Shiner said education and work with councils and charities to tackle knife crime was an important part of a joined-up approach.

She added: “The last thing that they want to do is to deal with the consequences of somebody who has been hurt – or a young person who has impacted the rest of their life by being arrested and dealt with for possession or injury.

“So it’s important to all of us that we tackle this. But it’s got to be everybody that does so, not just the police.

“Even though there is a real focus on it at this time, I want to reassure people in Sussex that it is still a relatively unusual crime. Sussex is a great and safe place to live.”