Ever wanted to know how many crimes were committed in your local area?

Well, by the end of the year you’ll be able to get some idea with every police force required to produce online interactive “crime maps”.

West Midlands and West Yorkshire are two of the forces who have put information about the number of offences in different neighbourhoods on their Web sites and on Wednesday the country’s biggest force, London’s Metropolitan Police, activated its crime mapping site.

The government believes that the maps will help alleviate public perceptions about crime, revealing that the number of actual offences is far lower than many people fear.

“By rolling out up-to-date, interactive crime maps, we can better inform people about crime problems in their area, and enable them to have much more of a say in what their local police focus on,” said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last month.

“The latest annual crime figures showed another drop in crime nationwide but it’s important that people understand what this means to them in their local area and where challenges remain.”

New London Mayor Boris Johnson, who made providing the maps a key manifesto commitment, said it gave people the chance to see how their local police were performing.

‘This new online service means that Londoners will, at long last, be able to get information about crime levels in their neighbourhood at the click of a button,” Johnson said.

But how much use are they? The Met’s maps currently only provide details of burglaries, robberies and vehicle crime. The Police Federation, the body that represents rank and file officers, said the maps are not going to help and could even give criminals an idea of where the police are vulnerable.

Criminologists also argue that the data can be misleading as areas with high crime often have low reporting rates.

Looking up the crime statistics for my “sub ward” of London, I discovered the number of crimes fell from 6 to 5 last month, with my area given an “average” crime rating. And to be honest, I don’t know whether that should make me feel relieved, or worried.

For the first time since he became mayor of London on May 2, Boris Johnson has overtaken Conservative leader David Cameron in “favourability”, according to an opinion tracker published on www.politicshome.com.

Johnson scored a rating of 3, up from -7 at the end of April, while Cameron got rated 1, up from -5.

The PHI5000 tracker is based on replies from a politically balanced group of 5000 voters across the UK, who answer a survey every day for the site, which was launched in April and is powered by opinion pollsters YouGov.

The panel are asked daily questions on a rotation system, covering their attitudes to the whole political landscape. As part of this, politicshome tracks a wide range of political personalities, including Cameron’s and Johnson’s favourability ratings.

Because of the consistency of the sample and questionnaire of the tracker, the site is able to track subtle changes in public opinion, it says.

The three leading candidates for the post of London mayor battle it out in the “Rainbow London Mayor Debate”. Watch Boris Johnson fighting hard to convince voters he can run the show at City Hall, Ken Livingstone campaigning on key issues like the buses, while Brian Paddick is trying to get a word in edgeways…not much difference to previously televised debates….except for the outfits!

In the first televised debate between the three main London mayoral candidates, we learned that former police chief Brian Paddick would not accept a job in a rival’s administration.

Paddick, who needs a huge swing in support to have any chance of election, has said that as mayor he would personally chair the Metropolitan Police Authority, which oversees the capital’s police.

But the Liberal Democrat candidate’s reply was quite clear when asked on BBC’s Newsnight whether he would serve under a re-elected Mayor Ken Livingstone, if offered the chance of running London police policy.

“No, I would not,” Paddick told host Jeremy Paxman during Tuesday’s programme.

“When I left the police I promised myself that I would only take advice, I would not take orders any more.”

We also learned that Livingstone would vote for Paddick — if forced to choose between him and the Tory runner Boris Johnson.

Perhaps little surprise there, but Labour’s Livingstone was the only one to answer Paxman’s question — which of the other two candidates would they vote for if they couldn’t vote for themselves.

Johnson “couldn’t possibly comment”, while Paddick couldn’t decide, saying his rivals were “bad in different ways”.

Brian Paddick criticises the suggestion that Conservative London mayor candidate Boris Johnson could run the capital as a kind of chairman supported by expert advisers.

“I think a lot of people are prepared to entertain the idea of Boris Johnson as mayor on the assumption that he will be surrounded by advisers, who will effectively run London for him,” the Liberal Democrat candidate said in an interview with Reuters.

“If you allow your personal advisers that amount of power, you end up with the sort of allegations of corruption that Ken Livingstone has had to face.”

Click on video below | You can read a longer interview here

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