A detailed breakdown of crime figures in Kingston unveiled by the police can, for the first time, be easily accessed by the public.

Annual Metropolitan Police crime figures have previously been restricted to borough-by-borough breakdown. But the new information provides information on crime in each Kingston ward on a new website.

Figures for the Royal borough show the town centre Grove ward as being the most crime-ridden area.

Thefts here are more than eight times the borough average.

Although this can be attributed to the fact it is the busiest area of Kingston, the website does highlight some other more surprising results.

In the salubrious Coombe Hill ward the most prolific type of crime is violence although incidents have fallen in the last year.

Safer Neighbourhoods partnership Inspector David Gair said statistics enforced the message it had been promoting for some time that Kingston was a safe London borough.

He added: "And it is nice for people who are interested to know how prevalent crime is and to monitor how police are performing.

"We've been presenting crime figures to local working groups for some time - this website is just a different tool."

Inspector Karen Llewellyn of the safer neighbourhood team said that it was not just crime figures such as these that drove police priorities.

She said: "People's perception of crime is still different to that shown in the figures and we have got hundreds of statistics available to us.

"But what the public tell us at meetings is how we set our priorities."

To find out what crime is like in your street log on to www.met.police.uk/crimefigures and click on Kingston. Access your local statistics by typing in your postcode.

ksaines@london.newsquest.co.uk