Borough has third worst figures in London
Crime on buses in Merton is on the increase, according to figures revealed by the Liberal Democrats.
The most recent figures produced by Transport for London (TfL) shows that April 2010-March 2011, bus crime in the borough increased by 9%.
Merton had the third highest figures in London, behind Barking and Dagenham (17.8%) and Tower Hamlets (11.5%). In Hammersmith and Fulham it increased by 8%.
Caroline Pidgeon, Leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group, used the figures to challenge Boris Johnson's election claim about bus crime statistics. She said bus crime rose in more than a third of London boroughs.
She said: "Just three months ago the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority warned Boris Johnson that the way the Mayor of London was using the bus crime data could 'be damaging to public trust in the statistics’.
"Sadly the Mayor has totally ignored this warning and is up to his old tricks of using misleading figures. It is simply wrong to suggest that bus crime is falling across the whole of London, when in fact in more than one third of boroughs it is increasing - and in some boroughs significantly.”
"Even where there has been some fall in the figures there should be no grounds for complacency about the level of crime on London's buses. Bus crime is a problem everywhere, and in far too many places it is a growing problem."
June 3, 2011