Hate crime goes up by 10% after big increase on previous year

Hate crimes have surged more than 10% in the last year, official police figures show.

There were 103,379 such offences recorded by police in total, the majority of which (76%) were race hate crimes (78,991).

This is an 11% increase in the last year and the number has more than doubled since 2012/13, when 42,255 were recorded.

Transgender identity hate crimes increased by 37% to 2,333; while there was a 25% rise in offences triggered by sexual orientation (14,491).

Disability hate crimes increased by 14% to 8,256 while offences motivated by religion rose by 9% to 8,336, data published by Home Office showed.

Melania Geymonat, 28, and her American girlfriend Chris were attacked in an alleged homophobic assault earlier this year (Sam Webb)

Racist graffiti daubed onto the window of a family home in Manchester (MEN MEDIA)

Over half (54%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police were for public order offences, a third (36%) involved violence while 5% were recorded as criminal damage and arson.

Around 12% of hate crime offences were estimated to have more than one motivation, with the majority of these being both race and religion.

The ongoing rise is partly because of improvements in the way crimes are recorded but there were spikes after events such as the EU referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.