Police are reluctant to make arrests because the closure of custody suites has led to hour-long trips to the nearest cells. Officers are now letting suspects go “and hoping for the best”, the chairman of the Police Federation told The Daily Telegraph.

Since 2010, the number of custody suites in England – where offenders are taken after arrest – has dropped by as much as 50 per cent to 200, it is estimated. Further cuts are in the pipeline.

The number of arrests also fell sharply from 1.5 million to just under 780,000 in the decade from March 2008 to March 2017 – although there are a number of factors behind the drop, including a change in policy.

One force – Gloucestershire – has just one suite of cells to cover the entire county while Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Wiltshire have just two each.

The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said the distances now being travelled to bring in suspects, was deterring front-line officers from making arrests. It could take four hours – the equivalent of half a shift – to drive an offender to a custody suite, process the suspect and then drive back to the town where the arrest was made.