Northumbria Police confirm rise in South Tyneside hate crime as councillor calls figures ‘worrying’
Reports of hate crime in South Tyneside are on the rise, according to police data presented to borough councillors.
The figures were discussed at a recent meeting (Nov 4, 2025) of South Tyneside Council’s Our Place Scrutiny Committee during a report on “public protection and crime and disorder.”
Police data presented at the meeting confirmed that over the past 12 months, South Tyneside recorded 334 hate crimes, marking a 2.4 per cent increase from the previous year’s total of 326.
The figures were a “rolling 12 months” of data and it was noted the trend aligns with national data, where the UK saw a two per cent rise reaching 137,550 hate crimes, the council confirmed.
Concerns about a local hate crime rise were recently raised at September’s Riverside Community Area Forum (CAF) meeting, which covers South Tyneside’s Beacon and Bents, West Park, Simonside and Rekendyke and Westoe wards.
Borough-wide hate crime figures were presented to the Our Place Scrutiny Committee at South Shields Town Hall on November 4, 2025, as part of a wider presentation on crime data involving Aelfwynn Sampson, Northumbria Police’s chief superintendent for South Tyneside.
The police boss said the 2.4 per cent increase in hate crime reports over the last 12 months “tracks a national trend” and while the data was not broken down by specific types of hate crime, councillors were told the area where the police had recorded the “most increase” was “race-related hate”.
“Just for assurance for members and councillors, every single hate crime that gets reported is subject to scrutiny through our daily management meeting and the context of the community engagement team,” chief superintendent Sampson said.
“We monitor every single hate-related incident as well just to ensure that we have got the wrap-around support in place for those experiencing hate crime linked to all protected characteristics across the borough.
“What we’re seeing here does represent an increase but again we’re working really hard around having those safe reporting centres and more outreach within the communities to give people confidence to report if they’re experiencing hate crime to bring it to our attention, or the local authority’s attention, for us to work together to improve that community cohesion, education and understanding.”
Councillors also heard that the police works well with South Tyneside Council to tackle hate crime via various partnership schemes, including work with schools.
Councillor Rachael Taylor acknowledged the definition of hate crime covers a wide range of protected characteristics but asked the police boss whether there was any “correlation” between the rise in hate crime and flags.
Chief superintendent Sampson said the police could not tie the increase to “one single thing” but referenced several factors, including “community, geopolitical, environmental, local and national political change and unrest”, as well as “recent protest activity across the UK”.
The police boss said South Tyneside’s hate crime figures matched a national data trend and in response to Cllr Taylor’s question about flags, added she could not say there was a “direct correlation.”
Separate council figures presented at the same meeting confirmed there had been 12 reports of hate crime to South Tyneside Council over the 2024/25 year and six reports so far between April 2025 and September 2025.
James Maughan, senior manager for public protection on the council, said the local authority is involved with partnership meetings and “community engagement events”, mosque visits with partners, work with schools under the “safer schools” initiative and wider monitoring of “community cohesion/tension”.
“While internally we haven’t seen an increase in reporting of hate crime, in what we do to tackle that we’re looking at community tensions across the borough and working with partners to address that,” he added.
Councillor Alison Strike, chair of the Our Place Scrutiny Committee, said the hate crime figures were “worrying” and noted the wider impact of social media.
“It’s whipped up into a frenzy about different things on social media and there’s an awful lot of people guilty of sharing this kind of stuff as well which I think they should be ashamed of, they should really look at things in perspective,” Cllr Strike added.
“Social media is absolutely out of hand as far as I can see and causes so many problems for residents and individuals, especially if you’re a victim of hate crime.”