Crimes recorded on Britain’s railways have increased by 17%, fuelled by a sharp rise in the number of violent and sexual offences, official figures show.

The British Transport Police reported 61,159 crimes in 2017-18, up from 52,235 during the previous 12 months.

Violent crime accounts for nearly one in five of all cases after rising 26% to 11,711. The number of sexual offences increased 16% to 2,472, with the force adding that there were still many more crimes of this type which go unreported”.

In the same period, offences involving knives or other weapons went up by 46% to 206, while the number of robberies jumped 53% to 553 recorded crimes.

DCC Adrian Hanstock said: “The last year has been a very challenging one for our officers, who responded to multiple terrorist attacks as well as intervening almost 2,000 times with vulnerable people on the network. Despite these challenges, it is reassuring to see that the chance of becoming a victim of crime the railway network remains incredibly low.”

The BTP note crime is lower when examined in the longer term. A decade ago, the force recorded about 30 crimes per million passenger journeys on the rail network; last year there were 19 crimes recorded per million passenger journeys.

The force say the increase in the number of passenger journeys and the popularity of its confidential text service, 61016, to report crime are two important factors contributing to the increase in recorded crime.

BTP’s figures show a record number of people are trespassing on the tracks, accounting for 43% of disruption to trains, compared with 38% last year. Other crimes increasing on the rail network include throwing missiles at trains (up 35% to 316), arson (up 93% to 143), live cable theft (up 86% to 158) and theft from vending machines (up 21% to 240).

Paul Plummer, the chief executive of industry body the Rail Delivery Group, said: “The nature of some crimes is changing and as part of our long-term plan to change and improve we are investing in new technology and innovations to make our railway even safer for our staff and customers.”