Fires, drugs, mutilations and unemployment rates; a picture of Gravesham and Dartford has been revealed in the latest report into community safety and it makes for a grim read.

The Dartford and Gravesham Community Safety Strategic Assessment 2015 is a joint strategic action plan to tackle issues in a co-ordinated approach with emergency services, across the boroughs,

Some of the most shocking things to emerge were the huge number of Female Genital Mutilations in the areas, compared with the rest of Kent; the soaring number of arsons and car crashes in Dartford; and how high the domestic abuse rate is in Gravesham.

The data covers October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015 and gives a general overview of the population, as well as crime in the districts.

Dartford council leader Jeremy Kite (Con) said: “The things that matter to people on a day to day basis are things like burglaries and anti-social behaviour. In these areas we are on the right track.

“But there are serious issues that need to be addressed. We have the Community Safety Partnership so we can keep track of these things. We need to know about these issues, where and why they’re happening to tackle them.

“You have successes and you have failures, but it’s important to remember that we’re the good guys here. Quite frankly, some elements of society are wrong’uns, and we’re doing everything we can to be one step ahead of them.”

The data was reviewed during last week’s Crime and Disorder Scrutiny Committee and the UK national terrorist threat level – which is currently ‘severe’ – was also touched on.

Radicalisation is not currently a named priority in the boroughs, but frontline council staff are being given training to help tackle it.

Gravesham council’s cabinet member with responsibility for community safety Cllr Samir Jassal said: “The new strategy report records many areas showing significant improvements. These include a fall in total recorded crime and violent crime in Gravesham as well as a further reduction in anti-social behaviour. Burglaries were also down by more than 19% and, significantly, re-offending rates have fallen too.

“Drug offences in the borough are also very low – below the Kent average and many policing operations have had an impact on the supply and use of illegal drugs.”

“We are currently in the process of developing a new Community Safety Strategy with all our partner agencies. Issues such as domestic abuse and protecting vulnerable people from harm will be a high priority as will our work relating to child abuse and exploitation.

“We work very closely with Kent Police and Probation – particularly in respect of prolific offenders through the Integrated Offender Management process. Appreciating that there is often a strong correlation between alcohol misuse and ASB/violent crime and between drug dependency and acquisitive crime such as shoplifting, we also have developed a number of multi-agency projects with the charity Crime Reduction Initiatives (West Kent Recovery Service) to ‘join-up’ the approach of services in dealing with offenders whose behaviour is influenced by substance misuse.”

For all the facts and figures, including tables and charts to give an overview of all the data, see this week's Dartford and Gravesend Messengers.