CRIME in York and North Yorkshire has soared by almost 15 per cent, according to new Home Office statistics.

But the North Yorkshire force, which covers York, claimed today that the increase was a "blip", entirely down to new crime counting rules.

It said the underlying trend was for crime to remain steady - and the force revealed that crime had actually fallen by more than four per cent in the first two months of this year.

A spokesman said the force had predicted more than a year ago that new counting rules would reveal a 15 per cent increase in recorded crime, and the assessment had proved correct.

He said 67,798 crimes were recorded between April 2002 and March 2003, compared with 59,149 the previous year.

"The largest increase in numbers of crimes recorded were in vandalism, common assault and theft, both from individuals and vehicles - all categories affected by the changed rules.

"Burglary, where the new rules do not have a strong influence, was down across the county, and continues to fall this year, and the detection rate was up."

Deputy Chief Constable Peter Walker said he welcomed the more detailed counting rules, which gave value to people's concerns. "The new crime figures give us a much clearer picture than we had a few years ago, enabling us to deploy our staff to areas where crime is known to happen."

He said it had been a considerable achievement for the force to have "held the line" on crime, and set in place a series of measures which would improve the force's performance further.

"We now have more officers than ever before, we have Police Community Support Officers in place, we have funding for new officers to control our anti-terrorism operations and we are committed to investment in ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition."

He said a quarter of North Yorkshire's crime was committed by people from outside the county, and ANPR gave police a superb tool for locating those responsible.

He said streamlining procedures would free officers from red tape, enabling them to spend more time on patrols and on crime detection.

Updated: 10:16 Friday, July 11, 2003