The Metropolitan Police has been accused of dropping tens of thousands of investigations into serious crimes, such as sexual assault and arson, within hours of them being reported by members of the public.

The UK’s largest force is reported to have “screened out “ 34,164 crimes on the same day they were reported in 2017, compared to 13,019 in 2016.

In the first five months of 2018, 18,093 investigations were closed in 24 hours, putting the number for the year on track to exceed last year’s total, The Guardian reported.

The figures, revealed after a freedom of information request, show a growing number of sexual offence cases are being closed on the same day they are reporting, climbing from 20 in 2016 to 49 in 2017, and 32 in the first five months of 2018.

Data obtained by the newspaper also showed that 303 cases of violent crime have been screened out so far in 2018 so far, compared to 290 cases in the whole of 2016. In 2017, 4,670 cases of arson and criminal damage were dropped on the same day they were reported, compared to 2,284 the year before.

Crimes are screened out after a primary assessment, and the figures come after the Met said in October 2017 that it would stop investigating cases where there was judged to be little prospect of identifying a suspect.