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COUNCIL leader Brian Millard getting his sums right.
‘Stockport is no capital of crime’
Barbara Canning31/ 5/2006
STOCKPORT'S leading councillor has sent two children's maths books to a London think-tank after miscalculated statistics listed the town as a major crime capital.
Council leader Brian Millard is urging Reform to go back to school after their poor maths skills branded Stockport as the third worst area for crime in the whole of England and Wales.
"Stockport, like most areas has its share of crime, but it's no 'crime capital," he said. "How would they feel if we issued a national news release falsely placing them at the bottom of a league of think-tanks - and then not apologising when we knew it was totally incorrect."
The books have been sent to Reform, along with two harsh letters of complaint, after the release of the Urban Crime Report which focused on the amount of crime per head of population in 2005.
But because Stockport's population was listed as just 136,000 rather that 282,000 the borough was ranked as the third worst area in the country for overall crime and the top hot spot for burglaries.
"Reform knows it has made a massive mistake in its calculations - they got our population wrong by more than 140,000 so we are actually right down the table, and certainly nowhere near the top," Coun Millard said.
"Sending Reform 'Counting Practice' for five to seven-year-olds' and Carol Vorderman's 'Maths Made Easy' is a hard-hitting way of making a very serious point. Reform's report, issued nationally last week, is a slur on a successful borough."
Reform's director Andrew Haldenby said that the population data was provided by the office of national statistics and they are currently investigation the inaccuracy claims.
"We said that this is not a definitive report but it has to be right. We are considering what the leader of the council has said in his letter and we will be responding," he said.
"In the interest of accuracy we have looked very hard at that issue and if that's right it might affect their position and we will publish the accurate results."
He added: "Reform has always had a strong reputation for the integrity of its work. We will of course work with Stockport Council and Greater Manchester Police to identify the right population area and so reach statistics on which we both agree."
But despite the errors he said the report is still a valuable piece of information on crime in the UK.
"We wanted to do this so that people can make comparisons and because it's our view that the provision of information is a very important way of improving performance of public services. People want to know how good their services are and this encourages the poorest ones to improve their performances.
"We weren't trying to single out any particular area, we were about showing that there is a definite variation in crime in this country," he added.
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