The police watchdog has warned of a “real possibility” that Britain’s exit from the European Union next year will trigger a spike in hate crimes, as a victims’ group warned of a return to a climate of hostility such as that seen in the 1990s.

The report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services found large-scale failings in the way hate crimes were dealt with, despite the issue supposedly being a priority.

Reforms promised after past concerns were raised have not been started, nor delivered upon, and a national policy to visit victims has been effectively ignored, HMICFRS found, although it also uncovered outstanding examples of police tackling the issue.

The report, ordered by the former home secretary Amber Rudd comes against a background of recorded hate crimes rising sharply, up by 57% between 2014-15 to 2016-17, with the bulk motivated by racial hatred.

The inspectorate said hate crimes had spiked after events such as terrorist attacks and during the Brexit campaign, and then after the vote to leave the EU in June 2016.

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HMICFRS said police forces across England and Wales should improve their response to hate crime and get ready for an upsurge when the UK formally leaves the EU next March. “We have shown in our report that incidents of hate crime ‘spike’ after national events,” said the report.

“So there is a real possibility that there will be a similar increase in reports in 2019 if, as is anticipated by the government, the United Kingdom formally leaves the European Union.”

The police and government vowed to treat hate crime seriously in the wake of Sir William Macpherson’s 1999 report into the Stephen Lawrence murder, which concluded discrimination in the ranks allowed a white racist gang to walk free.

Nearly 20 years on from those findings, the police watchdog report on the issue tells a story of some success, but also of a stretched police service failing to follow policies formulated to tackle the issue.

Suresh Grover of The Monitoring Group, an independent charity helping those who have suffered race hate, said: “There is an alarming and worsening situation for victims of race hate crimes over the last two years. We dealt with over 300 cases. Many of our clients do not get the support they need. In most cases evidence is not collated promptly and the communication with them is poor.

“This is leading to a breakdown in trust and failure to deal with the problem on a longterm basis. Our research across the UK shows a marked decline in BAME-led support groups. We are travelling backwards to a pre-Macpherson era where victims had to rely on their own resilience to survive and navigate their future.”

Government figures show that in 2012-13 there were 42,255 recorded hate crimes, rising to 80,393 by 2016-17. Police and academics believe the official figures are an underestimate.

The HMICFRS report noted that all police forces have said hate crime victims should be visited within one hour of making their complaint.

The report found that 28 out of the 43 forces across England and Wales were ignoring the policy. Of the rest, the inspectorate looked at 180 cases. Sixty five victims did not get a visit at all. In the 115 where they did, 42 were seen within 24 hours, the rest waited an average of five days.

.The report said: “Hate crime victims are more likely to suffer repeat victimisation, more likely to suffer serious psychological effects as a result and less likely than the victims of other crime to be satisfied with the police response.”

Investigators examined a sample of cases to see how they were handled. “In 89 out of the 180 cases, we considered that the police response wasn’t good enough. We saw evidence of delays and lack of action which led to the victim being let down,” the report said.

“It is difficult to escape the conclusion that competing demands are affecting the ability of forces to respond effectively to hate crime. However, it is also the case that we did not see a uniform commitment by the force leaders to treat victims of hate crime as a priority.”

It found past promises had not been kept. “In 2016, the government published Action Against Hate: the UK government’s plan for tackling hate crime.

“In the plan the police were assigned several actions to be completed, either by themselves or in partnership with others. At the time of our inspection, some of these actions hadn’t been started, and others had seen slow progress.”

Racist hate crimes make up 70% of the total of hate crimes, followed by those targeting someone’s sexual orientation (11%), religion (8%) and disability (7%).

The biggest rise was those hate crimes targeting a religion, which more than doubled, according to the figures.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead on hate crime, assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton, said: “Hate crime has been a priority for the police for many years and our response is among the best in the world.

“HMICFRS’s recommendations will help us to address inconsistencies around the country and provide a more effective response to victims. We will look carefully at the response times to victims.



“We will also look at whether the innovative approaches inspectors found working so well in some parts of the country could be replicated.”

