More than 27,000 people are pickpocketed in one borough

Residents of one borough had their pockets picked more than 6,000 times in a year – four times the number of victims in a borough less than a mile away.

Light-fingered criminals snatched money or phones from a total of 6,364 people in Southwark in the two years up to 12 months ago.

But in Wandsworth, a few hundred yards away at the nearest point around Vauxhall, the figure was only 1,446 – a quarter of the Southwark number.

Westminster, just on the other side of Vauxhall Bridge from both of them, had a total of 27,524 pockets picked – more than all the four boroughs below it put together.

It is the worst area in the country. Lambeth was the second worst borough south of the Thames, with exactly 4,000 incidents from January 2019 to December 2020.

The stats are revealed in a survey comparing thefts from a person in the worst 20 of hundreds of police areas in Britain drawn up by the comparethemarket website.

The figures will be a warning to holidaymakers – London tops the list as the most searched for city destination for UK travellers amid lockdown rules on holidaying overseas.

Travel demand to the capital has increased by 181 per cent in the last year.

The firm’s report said: “Some more popular areas in the UK may not be rife with pickpockets like you’d expect them to be, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t stay cautious.

“Wherever you’re travelling to in the UK, you should always keep your wits about you, protect your belongings and stay vigilant and alert to your surroundings.”