Figures by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) exposed huge variations in the rate of original claims, which were classified by police as “no crime”, with the rate for adult rapes ranging from three percent in Cumbria, northwest England, to 33 percent in Lincolnshire in the east.

Figures also indicated that there were about 10,000 recorded rapes of adults in England and Wales in the 12 months to March 2013, from which only 18 percent led to a sanction detection, where an offender was charged or cautioned for the offence.

Director of the Centre for Crime Prevention Peter Cuthbertson said, “It’s extremely worrying how many of the most serious offences aren’t recorded properly.”

The charity Rape Crisis also raised concerns over the high levels of “no-criming” and the huge disparities in statistics between different police forces.

An earlier report by Solicitor General Oliver Heald in response to a parliamentary question revealed that British police had sent only 5,404 rape cases out of the 17,061 reports they received in 2012-13 to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Britain’s top prosecutor Keir Starmer also warned that nine in ten rapes and other serious sexual assaults go unreported due to the victims’ distrust of the UK criminal justice system.

The director of public prosecutions added that only ten percent of all victims of serious sexual assaults in the country go to the police, mainly because they do not believe the criminal justice system will help them.

SHI/SHI