Whitechapel Tube station topped the table for the most amount of crimes on the East End Underground network last year - but offences across London as a whole dropped.

A total of 35 crimes were recorded on the line, which is on the District and Hammersmith and City services as well as the new East London line, between July last year and June this year.

That was up from 21 the previous year, figures from the British Transport Police show.

It was closely followed by Mile End station which recorded 32 offences but that had dropped significantly from the 115 crimes which took place there the previous year.

Bethnal Green had 30 incidents, down from 53 the year before.

Crime is dropping on the Underground network as a whole and the BTP put this down to high visibility policing.

Offences on the Tube fell by a fifth in the last three years and by almost a third on buses.

Aldgate, which is on the Metropolitan and Circle lines, only recorded two crimes.

In Tower Hamlets, the DLR fared better still, with Poplar – the worst hit station – logging 13 crimes and most others seeing less than 10.

The worst hit Tube station in London was King’s Cross, which logged almost 200 offences in the last year.

BTP said: “The reduction is due to the highly visible policing style that BTP operates on the Tube and the use of intelligence and crime-pattern analysis to ensure officers are deployed to the stations and locations where they are needed most.”

London’s transport system is safer than those in almost all other European cities.