A WAVE of burglaries in Buckinghamshire recently has left Chiltern residents concerned. 

The Little Chalfont Parish Council chairman Vinny Patel spoke out after a spate of burglaries allegedly targeted five homes in the Elizabeth Avenue area in November.

Following the concerning trend in home crime in the Chiltern and South Bucks, the police held an online forum on December 1 to address residents' worries. 

Mr Patel said: “At the moment I’m very concerned about the burglaries happening in Little Chalfont.

“Five homes within one weekend, which was really bad and shocking.

“Unfortunately, it’s put the fear into the Asian community there. Most of them are scared of going out.”

He had been in contact with some of the victims and the police, and he hoped to see “require more police presence in the area.”

Many of the victims of the alleged daytime burglaries were young families, he said.

“Most of the time the burglaries happened on the way to school to pick children up between half past three and five o’clock.

“As soon as they leave and come back the houses were ransacked or broken into, which is a very horrible way to come home.”

Commenting on the burglary figures in South Bucks during an online event, Detective Inspector Lucie Clarke said there was no indication that a specific ethnic group was targeted.

“In the recent rise in burglaries we have at the moment can’t see anything that indicates a specific group is being targeted, but obviously around festive periods at households it could influence an offender selecting certain house to target.

“At the moment we’ve got a couple of trends, and one is entry at the rear of the property, and that is likely because the rear of the property is often secluded.

"It’s more vulnerable, because I think sometimes there’s an understanding that if it’s a rear door and it leads into a garden that people don’t often lock them.

“We definitely have at the moment one of those series happening at the rear of the property.

“We’ve also seen first floor break, basically an open window on the first floor.

"Our offenders will be prepared to climb onto flat roofs but also for example people leave wheelie bins in the garden, and some leave their ladders in the garden.

“We’re seeing offenders use whatever they can to get into a property.”

During the Covid lockdowns in the Chiltern and South Bucks area, the number of burglaries more than halved from 796 in 2019 to 349 in 2021.

Burglary offences are now returning to the pre-Covid levels in the area, Ms Clarke said. 

In 2022 so far, 434 burglaries have been recorded in Chiltern and South Bucks, TVP’s figures show.

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