THERE is no ‘complete answer’ to the rising level of violence seen across the region this summer, the Police and Crime Commissioner has claimed.

Over the past few months violent crime in the West Midlands has soared - with knife attacks, assaults and even shootings becoming a regular occurrence on our streets.

Police resources have been rapidly dwindling in recent years, while funding for the force has also been cut.

The average spend per person by the police force in the West Midlands is £186 per person.

It is nearly double this in London, at £337 per person.

And PCC David Jamieson thinks that, while cuts and a longer, hotter summer have played their part in the rising levels of violence, this alone does not explain why there has been such a rise this year.

“There’s two things happening this summer,” he said.

“You’ve got the background level of violence, that type of nasty violence we’ve seen increasing over the past two years.

“You put on top of that this fine weather, and that has actually escalated it further. And the fine weather, the more people out, the longer daylight, more people drinking outside.

“So there’s more interaction with people and therefore there’s more violence, I’m afraid.

“But the background violence is also going up, which is really quite worrying.

“And I don’t think we have a complete answer to this, I don’t think we have any answer.

“It’s happening right across the country. They’re seeing incidents that at one time would have been a minor skirmish between people, have now turned out to be quite nasty.

“People say is it the post-Brexit period, is it a period of being uncertain? Is it the affect of austerity? That a lot of people are just angry and upset?

“I don’t know the answer to that. There’ll be academics and others working on that.

“But it is worrying, that the background level of violence has gone up.”