THE progress in the fight against crime is revealed in new figures released today.

The number of burglaries, assaults, woundings and thefts in York are all detailed in a report which is due to be discussed by City of York Council on Wednesday.

It shows crimefighters, the Safer York Partnership, the council and agencies like the police are well on the way to meeting targets in some areas for 2007/2008, but unlikely to meet targets for others, particularly wounding.

The report shows that in 2003/2004 there were 1,018 cases of wounding - which encompasses bruising to serious injuries - but that figure had jumped to 2,081 in 2005/2006. This year, 2006/2007, that figure had fallen slightly to 1,800, but there would still need to be a 50 per cent drop to achieve the Home Office set target of 916 cases for 2007/2008.

Jane Mowat, director of Safer York Partnership, explained why the figures for wounding are so high.

She said: "Because we take a very pro-active stance, it can result in more crimes being recorded and that's largely why we're struggling to meet the target.

"Over the last couple of months, we've been looking at drilling down deeper into those crime types and quite a large number of them are instances of domestic violence. That's where resources will go next year, with a hope to reducing wounding."

By contrast, house burglaries are down from 2,346 in 2003/2004 to 1,081 this year. Conversely, the target for 2007/2008 is 1,642, but Mrs Mowat said this target was set by the Home Office in 2005 and cannot be changed. Even if the number of burglaries increased over the next year it is likely the target would still be met but Mrs Mowat said it was felt Safer York Partnership could continue its downward trend.

Car crime is also down which is being attributed to the police successfully targeting crime hotspots.

But thefts from vehicles have increased over the last year although the number is down from the 2003/2004 figures.

Bike thefts are also down.

The fight against bike thieves has been well publicised in The Press with the police introducing cycle tagging schemes and proactively stopping cyclists and checking the bike does belong to them.

Overall Safer York Partnership is well on target to reducing crime from 17,948 cases in 2003/2004 to 13,625 next year.

In fact the target has already been reached with 13,304 crimes being recorded for 2006/2007.

A spokeswoman for City of York Council said: "The police, working with partners across the city including the council and Safer York Partnership, have already exceeded the targets for 2007/08 in many areas and we would hope to see this trend continuing over the next few years."