Fraud and burglary should be prioritised by police to regain public trust, a major review will recommend, as experts warned they are currently treated as “Cinderella crimes”.

The Strategic Review of Policing, which is to be published this week and will mark the biggest report of its kind for decades, will link falling confidence in forces with failures around rising fraud cases and low-level crime.

Only one in every thousand frauds led to a charge or court summons, a survey that is to form part of the publication has found.

String of scandals

The review will also show that the Metropolitan Police has experienced the steepest decline in public perception after a year of high-profile scandals, The Sunday Times reported.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents expressed confidence in their local police in 2020, down five per cent from 2016.

Mike Haley, chief executive of Cifas, Britain’s biggest independent anti-fraud agency, said the statistics were a “scandalous” indictment of how the crime is policed.

“For far too long, fraud has been the Cinderella service, ignored by policymakers, and given a low priority by police,” he said.

“Research has proven the link between fraud and organised crime, with money raised by fraud often going on to fund further high harm crimes such as people and drug trafficking.”

“We would like to see fraud made a policing priority. It is scandalous that fraud accounts for 40 per cent of all crime, yet just two per cent of all police funding is allocated to tackling it.”

Last year, analysis of official crime statistics found that almost one million burglaries had gone unsolved since October 2015 amid concerns about the impact of cuts in neighbourhood policing.

Take tougher action

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is expected to welcome the findings of the strategic review, which urges police to take tougher action on “traditional” low-level crimes, such as car theft and burglary, thought to be “screened out” due to scarce resources.

Sir Michael Barber, the chairman of both Delivery Associates and the review, is set to recommend the establishment of a new government agency in an attempt to reform the police approach to crime prevention.

In a speech at the Centre of Policy Studies in February, Sir Michael warned that police were struggling to adapt to the present, let alone making preparations for the future, as he likened forces to Betamax video recorders in a world of “blockchain criminals”.