Tower Hamlets police sent out a tweet (@MPSTowerHam) recently to say that no residential burglaries had been reported overnight. Somebody replied to say that was nothing to boast about. I disagree. There are 254,000 residents in the borough and the fact none of them had their home broken into is a good result.

The annual crime figures were released a few weeks ago. These numbers give a broad indication of how police are performing. The numbers across London are good with the lowest serious youth violence figures since records began, the lowest burglary levels in ten years, with street robbery down by over 10pc.

So how are we doing in Tower Hamlets? Here are some headline figures: Residential burglary down by 10pc; Motor Vehicle crime down by 6pc; Domestic Violence Sanctioned Detections (the number of people we catch) up by 27pc; Criminal Damage offences down by 13pc; Gun Crime down by 50pc.

Looking beyond the numbers to the people, these statistics mean fewer victims of crime this year compared to last year. That has to be good news.

This doesn’t happen by chance. We have worked long and hard to understand the factors that cause crime and introduced development plans at ward level which the officers on SNTs manage. We worked with our partners to identify particular hot spots where can deploy extra officers to prevent further crime as soon as a trend is identified (such as been the effect of the Town Centre Team and the Partnership Task Force). We have targeted particular crime types such as the sterling work of the CID supporting victims of domestic violence. And we have targeted known criminals to catch them in the act and even have a, perfectly legitimate, policy of knocking on their door to let them know we’re watching them as an effective deterrent.

Of course there is a lot more we can do. Notably around reducing mobile phone crime and improving the rate at which we detect crime. One major leap forward will come with the introduction of the Local Policing Model in Tower Hamlets next month where more officers will be transferred to Safer Neighborhoods with less police officers in back room jobs. And all of this while we continue to deliver an efficient 999 response, and provide a police response to major events within the Borough, such as the Mela on the 12th June.

As I write the sun is shinning with a hint of warmth as a reminder the summer is only just starting! It would be remiss of me, therefore, not to mention the need to keep your windows shut and locked in the hot weather when you are out the house and at night so that we can have many more days when we can say there were no reports of residential burglaries in Tower Hamlets.