Appendix E

 

Sussex Police Crime Data Set for BHCC Statement of Licensing Policy 2025 Review

 

Operation Marble

 

Due to the large concentration of licensed premises and night clubs in the centre of Brighton, a high proportion of the Division’s violent crime and serious sexual offences are committed within a relatively small area. The Division receives a large influx of visitors to the city centre at weekends.  Many of these people attend the pubs and night-clubs during nighttime hours and as a result an enhanced policing operation (with Directed Patrol Activity – DPA) is provided, called Operation Marble.

 

Op Marble covers an area between Preston Street to the West – The Level to the North – Kemptown to the East and the seafront between West Pier and Concorde 2 to the South. This covers the area previously designated as the Cumulative Impact Zone (now referred to as the City Safety Area) and is regularly under review to ensure that limited Police resources are being used to their optimum.

 

The emphasis of Op Marble is a highly visible presence of officers deployed on foot as well as focus on regularly updated hot spots (produced using live crime and incident data) to help reduce the risk of violent crimes. It runs on a Friday and Saturday night in response to pressures from the Nighttime Economy as with later opening pubs, bars, clubs and late-night refreshment premises, an increase in crime (particularly violent crime associated with alcohol) is seen in the earlier hours of the morning.

 

Several supporting initiatives run alongside the Police during the Op Marble time frame including:

 

 

Standalone operations still exist to cover significant events in the calendar such as the Halloween weekend, Bank Holidays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Pride in order to reduce risk with an adjusted Police presence/response. Post Covid-19 has seen some shifts in how people go out and enjoy themselves in the Night Time Economy and the scope of data considered for the police analysis does not cover any periods of lockdown; beginning from 1st January 2022.

 

The data analysis (as included below – Graph 1) has shown that between 2022 – 2024 there has been a year-on-year increase in violent occurrences both during the hours covered by Operation Marble and within the non-Marble hours data sets. Police data confirms that the hotspot of violent occurrences and intoxication continues to be focused within the city centre where there are high volumes of licensed premises, hospitality and nighttime economy venues.

 

Based on Sussex Police Beat areas the highest volumes of violent crimes and intoxication between 01/01/2022 – 31/12/2024 are shown in Map 1 below. These were in Regency (CC1003) where there were 2292 violent occurrences involving intoxication, St Peters & North Laine (CC1004) with 1609 occurrences and Queens Park (CC2005) with 1094 occurrences. This map is inclusive of all occurrences within both the Operation Marble DPA timings and the non-Marble days and hours over the 3-year period.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Graph 1: Overall Violent Occurrences & Intoxication in Brighton & Hove 2022-2024

 

All occurrences have either ‘ALC’ or ‘DRG’ Class NICL or the Substance Use field contains: ‘affected by alcohol’, or ‘affected by drink and drugs’, or ‘affected by drink or drugs’, or ‘affected by drugs’. Further caveats to the data can be found at Appendix A.

 

 

 

Map 1: Overall Violent Occurrences & Intoxication in Brighton & Hove 2022-2024

 

Caveat to be mentioned - the below map will only capture occurrences where eastings and northings of an address were completed. Therefore, there will be some occurrences missing from the map.

 

 

Further analysis shows that overall, there was an increased risk of violent occurrences and intoxication in the evening hours and the early hours of the morning both during the Marble DPA timings and outside the Marble DPA hours (as shown in Tables 1a-c and 2a-c). There is a similarity of increased risk hours and the hotspot location for both the data set timings evidencing that there is a continual risk of violence and intoxication throughout the week.  The caveats for the data used are provided at the end of this document (Appendix A).

 

 

Hotspot Maps and Police analysis to support continuation of the current focus and footprint of a Special Policy covering the city centre within the Statement of Licensing Policy

 

Data was drawn from Police systems to cover two distinct time frames:

 

1.    Op Marble DPA (Directed Patrol Activity) Data – any violent occurrences based on the search criteria that occurred between Friday 19:00 – 07:00hrs Saturday and Saturday 19:00hrs – 07:00hrs Sunday.

 

2.    Non-Marble Data – any violent crimes based on the search criteria that occurred outside of the Op Marble timings. Crimes where the time frame was over a long period were also included, meaning there is a likely chance that the offence may have occurred during Op Marble times but is not specified e.g. Thursday 21:00hrs – Monday 08:30hrs – there is a realistic probability it could have occurred during either Marble or Non-Marble hours.

 

A search of police crime data recording systems was completed by an analyst searching the date actual from ‘01/01/2022 – 31/12/2024’, the area division ‘Brighton and Hove’, the Home Office Crime Group ‘Violent Crime’, the Class NICL (National Incident Category List) ‘ALC’ or ‘DRG’, or the Substance Use field equal to ‘affected by alcohol’, or ‘affected by drink and drugs’, or ‘affected by drink or drugs’, or ‘affected by drugs’. Domestic abuse occurrences were included in both data sets. All caveats for the data and sources can be found at Appendix A at the end of this document.

A number of maps are included below to demonstrate crime hot spots within the city centre and how the current special policy areas (Cumulative Impact Zone - CIZ and Special Stress Area – SSA) relate to these.

These hotspot maps support the continuation of the current location and boundaries of the BHCC special policy as they can be seen to encompass the violent crime hotspots both within the nighttime economy timings (Op Marble) and outside of them e.g. daytime during the week. These peaks of risk may be explained in part by student nights as well as social changes e.g. the increased popularity of going out on a Thursday evening.

Key to Maps

The squares represent an individual event of crime during the time period mentioned. Each square = one violent crime.

Red squares indicate crimes during the Op Marble timings and blue squares indicate crimes outside the Op Marble timings.

The colours overlaid on the maps represent crime number density as follows:

The current footprints of the existing Cumulative Impact Zone (CIZ) are shown on the close-up maps with a blue line and the Special Stress Area (SSA) with a purple line. Please note these maps are not to an exact scale and are used for illustrative purposes only.

 

2022

City Wide Crime

Op Marble Timings                                                   Non-Marble Timings

 

City Centre Crime Hotspot

Op Marble Timings

 

 

Non-Marble Timings

 

2023

City Wide Crime

Op Marble Timings                                                   Non-Marble Timings

 

 

 

 

 

 

City Centre Crime Hotspot

Op Marble Timings

 

Non-Marble Timings

 

2024

City Wide Crime

Op Marble Timings                                                               Non-Marble Timings

 

City Centre Crime Hotspot

Op Marble Timings

 

 

 

 

 

 

Non-Marble Timings

Timings and the Matrix Approach

There continues to be an increasing demand for Police resources further into the early hours of the morning at the weekends, with the highest risk remaining consistent year on year. Brighton & Hove is also a university town, and the student population will have an impact on the midweek figures due to student nights and other student focused events.

 

Summary of Temporal Analysis (Tables shown below)

 

To note: Temporal analysis is calculated based on probability. Police will not always know an exact time a crime occurred and so when it could have occurred over a few hours the whole-time frame will be used. This results in a decimal result in the data as opposed to a whole number.

 

The core hours of 22:00 on a Friday until 04:00 on a Saturday and 21:00 on a Saturday until 04:00 on a Sunday show the highest risk (marked red) across all 3 years’ worth of data with this extending into moderately high risk (marked orange) until 05:00 both Saturday and Sunday in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This consistent demand to Policing until the early hours across all 3 years of data provides evidence of the risk for violent crime that is affected by intoxication, particularly in the city centre. Any extension to licensable hours or additional licensed premises granted without careful consideration is highly likely to add to the existing issues that the Brighton & Hove already faces.

 

Key to Tables

Highest risk

 

Moderately high risk

 

Moderate risk

 

Moderately low risk

 

Lowest risk

 

 

The numbers in the tables show the total numbers of individual incidents of crime during the stated date period.

Op Marble

Table 1a – Op Marble Timings 2022 (01/01/2022 – 31/12/2022)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1b – Op Marble Timings 2023 (01/01/2023 – 31/12/2023)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1c – Op Marble Timings 2024 (01/01/2024 – 31/12/2024)

Non-Marble Timings

Table 2a – Non-Marble Timings 2022 (01/01/2022 – 31/12/2022)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2b – Non-Marble Timings 2023 (01/01/2023 – 31/12/2023)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2c – Non-Marble Timings 2024 (01/01/2024 – 31/12/2024)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix A – Caveats and Explanations on the Data provided and used

 

An i-base search of Niche (Police Recording System) Crime Data was completed searching the date actual from ‘01/01/2022 – 31/12/2024’, the area division ‘Brighton and Hove’, the HO Crime Group ‘Violent Crime’, the Class NICL ‘ALC’ or ‘DRG’, or the Substance Use field equal to ‘affected by alcohol’, or ‘affected by drink and drugs’, or ‘affected by drink or drugs’, or ‘affected by drugs’.

 

Domestic abuse occurrences were included in both Op Marble and Non- Marble data sets. Reference made to domestic abuse occurrences is based on the completion of the ‘Hate Crime’ field which contain ‘DOM’, however, is reliant on the completion of this field. Based on the ‘Stats Status Type’ field, any ‘not grouped’ or ‘no crimes’ were removed from the data. It was requested that the data was inclusive of occurrences with the stats status type as ‘crime’ or ‘non-crime incident’, as whilst crimes are the main focus of the report, non-crime incidents also capture incidents that police have attended or spent time dealing with. This therefore shows the demand during Op Marble and Non-Marble times. There are some occurrences within the overall data set which have a ‘date actual from’ in either 2022, 2023, or 2024, but the date actual to may end the following year. These incidents have been kept in the data to reflect the search criteria of date actual from.

 

A caveat to be mentioned – the Class NICL and Substance Use field are reliant on the accuracy of this information being recorded accurately, if at all. Where this field is incomplete then the occurrence would not feature within the data set. Therefore, it is almost certain that there will be a large number of occurrences that will not be included within the data set based on the reliance on the Class NICL and Substance Use field, but those involved were intoxicated.

 

Numerical data sitting behind Graph 1.

 

2022

2023

2024

Crime

2229

3107

3360

Non-Crime Incident

547

182

0

TOTAL

2776

3289

3360

 

The data shows that the overall number of occurrences of violence and intoxication increased year on year. Whilst the number of non-crime incidents have decreased from 2022 – 2024, the number of crimes increased. To note, there were a high proportion of non-crime incidents with the HO Return Code Description ‘assault with injury’ in 2022, however, this decreased in 2023 and there were none in 2024. If the approach to such occurrences have changed, viewing these occurrences as crimes not non-crime incidents, where there were fewer occurrences in 2023 and none 2024, then this is likely to have impacted the overall increase in crime data.

The chart shows that over the last 3 years, there were less than a quarter of occurrences during the Op Marble DPA which were domestic related. The year with the highest number of domestic occurrences was 2023 which accounted for 23.5% of all occurrences during the DPA (240 actual).

Domestic Abuse occurrences were any occurrences which contained ‘DOM’ in the Hate Crime field. Also, all occurrences have either ‘ALC’ or ‘DRG’ Class NICL or the Substance Use field contains: ‘affected by alcohol’, or ‘affected by drink and drugs’, or ‘affected by drink or drugs’, or ‘affected by drugs’.