RACIST and religious hate crimes in West Yorkshire have increased by just over a fifth in the past three years.

The Telegraph & Argus analysed data from a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request sent to West Yorkshire Police about the number of recorded racial or religious hate crimes in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

This included racially or religiously aggravated harassment; assault with injury; public fear, alarm or distress; criminal damage; and assault without injury.

There were 27,793 hate crimes across those three years and 28,397 victims, as one crime may have multiple victims.

The amount of crimes increased by 21 per cent between 2019 and 2021, from 8,513 (8,702 victims) to 10,293 (10,492 victims).

There were 8,987 crimes recorded in 2020 – a rise of five per cent from the year before – and 9,203 victims.

Of the 28,397 victims over the three years, just under half (13,226 victims) self-defined their ethnicity, while the rest (15,171) either did not state this, or it was not recorded by police.

The people who were attacked most for their ethnicity between 2019-2021 were those who defined themselves as white British.

They equated to 19 per cent of all the victims but just over 40 per cent of the 13,226 hate crime victims whose ethnicity was self-defined and recorded.

Those of Pakistani background were racially or religiously abused the second most over the three years, with just over 10 per cent of victims describing themselves as being of that ethnicity.

This worked out at 22 per cent of those victims with their ethnicity recorded.

The next highest were people who described themselves as black African (2.9 per cent), then those of any Asian background other than Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi (2.1 per cent), followed by those of Indian origin.

There were also hundreds of examples of black Caribbean people, those of other black backgrounds, people of mixed race and Chinese people being abused.

A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police said: “Increases can be attributed to a better awareness of how to report incidents and improvements in the ways offences can be reported.

“The Force has made improvements to how information about hate incidents is recorded.

“A number of sub-categories for the recording of faith and disability hate crimes have been introduced to get a better understanding of the impact of national and international events on local communities and improve and target services for victims.”