FOI reference: FOI-2025-3087
You asked
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire recently quoted Wiltshire-specific figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) year ending March 2025.
Please provide:
1. The source of these Wiltshire-specific figures (ONS bespoke tabulation, PCC analysis, or other).
2. The sample size and margins of error for Wiltshire respondents.
3. The Wiltshire-specific results (with sample sizes and confidence intervals) for all indicators in the ONS release, including:
- Overall confidence in local police
- Police visibility (weekly patrols)
- Victim satisfaction with police response
- Confidence that the CJS is effective
- Agreement that the system is fair
- Awareness of the Victims' Code
- Trust statements (reliability, fairness, respect, understanding of concerns)
If not intended for publication, please confirm why Wiltshire figures are being used in public communications without methodology or caveats.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The data relating to public police perceptions broken down by police force area can be found in our Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates of personal and household crime, anti-social behaviour, and public perceptions, by police force area, year ending March 2025 dataset.
This release contains the following tables with Wiltshire-specific data:
Table 1: Perceptions of the local police, people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 2a: Ratings of the local police, people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 2b: Ratings of the local police and local council in dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in the local area, people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 3a: Percentages of people aged 16 and over/households who were victims of crime (excluding fraud and computer misuse) once or more (prevalence risks), people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 3b: Percentages of people aged 16 and over/households who were victims of crime (including fraud and computer misuse) once or more (prevalence risks), people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 4a: Perceptions of anti-social behaviour, people aged 16 and over, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 4b: Percentage of people aged 16 and over who experienced or witnessed anti-social behaviour in the local area, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
Table 5: Percentage of people aged 16 and over who experienced or witnessed anti-social behaviour (ASB) in the local area, England and Wales, year ending March 2025
The published tables include sample sizes and confidence intervals for all estimates where appropriate, following standard ONS methodology for CSEW police force area breakdowns.
However, regarding the other metrics mentioned in your request (confidence that the Criminal Justice System is effective, agreement that the system is fair, awareness of the Victims' Code, and police visibility measures), we do not hold these indicators at police force area level.
The information requested by police force area is not held for FOI purposes, as it would need to be created. This would involve complex statistical processing requiring specialist expertise to determine appropriate methodologies for small sample analysis, apply statistical adjustments and weighting techniques, and make informed judgements about the reliability and validity of estimates derived from limited data points. Public authorities are not obliged to create new information under the FOI Act. The reason we have not created these estimates previously is because our sample sizes are small, which would render a breakdown of data to this degree meaningless. Therefore, these metrics are only available in our national-level Perception and experience of police and criminal justice system, England and Wales: year ending March 2025 article.