Dog attacks in England up 22%
Dog attacks in England have increased by 22% in the past two years, with some areas seeing attacks soar by more than 60%, new data reveals.
ITV News submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all police forces in England and the 23 forces that responded documented 11,373 dog attacks between July 2021 and June 2022. During the same period the following year, there were 13,940 attacks reported.
The areas that have seen the sharpest increase since 2021: Gloucestershire (+62%), Cambridgeshire (+52%), Lancashire (+47%), Bedfordshire (+40%), and Nottinghamshire (+31%),
The data also shows the number of dogs detained under the Dangerous Dogs Act has gone up by more than 50% since July 2021. This includes the number of banned dogs seized by police alongside those detained for being dangerously out of control.
Meanwhile, the number of dogs that have been destroyed under the Act in England since July 2021 has increase by 30%.
Information obtained about XL Bullies suggests a significant rise in the number of incidents involving the breed in the months between July 2021 and July 2023.
In Northumbria, the number of cases involving an XL Bully went up from a total of 10 between July 2021 and June 2022, to 47 between July 2022 and June 2023 – an increase of 370%.
One Comment
Doug
Let me add some context to these often repeated and alarming dog attack stats. In Parliament, MP Anna Frith stated that the likely figure for dog attacks is in fact higher than Police reports at around 35,000 per. Accepting that analysis, with 68 million people in the UK, that’s approximately 0.05% of the population being affected.
Of the dog population – estimated to be around 12 million – assuming only one attack for each attacking dog, that’s 0.3% of dogs that attack.
These figures seem relatively low when considered this way and perhaps the public can live in less fear of dogs.