Rural Crime Stats for August, September, October.

The following is a summary for North Yorkshire as opposed to Scarborough / Whitby in particular. However, there is nothing to indicate anything different at this time. Crime figures pertinent to Scarborough district itself have been added at the end.

What has been a difficult spring for our farming and rural communities has continued into the summer/autumn period with continued high fuel and energy prices, the price of Brent crude oil remained over $100/barrel for large parts of the period fluctuating between $110 in August to $85/barrel as we approached October. Prices to agricultural businesses fluctuated between £1 and £1.20 per litre for red diesel resulting in fuel bills being many more thousands than they had been for the previous year. This was compounded by the continued high prices of fertiliser and other inputs such as feed and agro chemicals all because of high gas and oil prices. The market value for produce produced has been good this summer offsetting slightly the increased input costs but nevertheless these factors have placed extra strain on the farming families in the rural community.

We have not recently been targeted for theft of heating oil or agricultural oil/diesel.  Several pro-active operations over previous months, with increased media coverage, hopefully assisted in these results. However, we are fully aware this may change over the coming months as temperatures dip and demand increases

The farming sector this year has seen its rural subsidy payments split by the RPA with half being paid during late spring and the other half being paid in December as normal, this was aimed at assisting farmers with the additional costs due to fuel/energy rises but it may have a detrimental impact later in the year when they only receive half of what they would normally receive at the end of the year.

Rural communities have also faced the added cost in fuel and heating resulting in increased tension and despair in managing the cost of living and the ability to travel.

Avian bird flu has reared its head again this autumn with a new lockdown being put in place from Monday 10th November 2022, there have been several cases in North Yorkshire and the impact on the poultry sector is huge.

The shooting industry is struggling, through a multitude of factors including avian influenza, and the inability of accessing pheasant chicks to rear as they would normally for the lowland shoots.  Upland shoots are still trying to recover from heather beetle and other environmental impacts over the previous two years which have reduced numbers. 

Our rural watches are now becoming fully active in their own right following the slowing down of their workload from harvest and autumn drilling. This will hopefully have a twofold benefit of increased intelligence coming in but also act as a deterrent to travelling criminals. Our working model for using “Whatsapp” has been recognised and is being looked at nationally.