Lewisham Gun Crime Up 39% While Knife Offences Fall 9.6%

Gun crime in Lewisham rose by 39 per cent to 96 offences in the 12 months to August, while knife crime fell by 9.6 per cent to 536. On our count of Metropolitan Police figures, that gun crime rise is the biggest of any of London’s 32 boroughs, in a year when City Hall says the capital’s total fell by 9.1 per cent.

Knife crime in Rushey Green, the ward that includes Catford Broadway, more than doubled over the same period, from 33 offences to 74.

The figures sit behind an announcement from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. On 23 October he said his Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) would reach its one millionth Londoner that month, and that hospital admissions of young people for knife assault had fallen by 55 per cent since it was set up in 2019. City Hall’s release does not mention Lewisham, so we went to the data underneath it.

Lewisham’s figures

These are our totals from the Met’s monthly data, for the same period City Hall used.

So the fall in knife crime does not extend to every measure. Offences where someone was hurt went up, and violence with injury rose faster than in all but three boroughs. City Hall puts the rise in violence with injury across London at 1.3 per cent. The Met says a change to its crime classifications in October 2025 affected the groupings for violence against the person, so that comparison needs some care.

The Met has since added September. The 12-month knife crime total is now 540, against 564 a year earlier, and offences with injury stand at 164, against 159. Violence with injury is 2,869, against 2,576, and personal robbery is 795, against 748.

Why the gun crime figure needs care

The numbers are small enough for one busy month to move them. Lewisham recorded 13 gun crime offences in August 2026 and one in September, which took the rolling total down from 96 to 91. But the longer run shows a steady climb rather than a single spike.

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The Met’s gun crime count is broader than shootings. Offences it classes as lethal barrel discharges fell from 10 to 2 in the same period, even as the total rose.

Knife crime has a different shape. The total fell by 148 offences between March 2025 and March 2026, then rose by 25 by September. The Met says it reviewed how it records knife offences from April 2024 onwards, so these are the earliest clean 12-month totals we can give.

Ward by ward

Rushey Green now has more knife offences than any other Lewisham ward, overtaking Deptford, which fell by 26.

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The 33 for Rushey Green was a low base: the ward’s total was 44 in the year to March 2025. Offences with injury there went from 13 to 32, and gun crime offences from 2 to 12.

Ward totals are small, so a few incidents can move them a long way. They count where offences were recorded, not where the people involved live. The ward figures added up to 576 of the borough’s 593 offences in the earlier year and 531 of 536 in the latest, so a little of the movement may reflect better recording of locations.

How Lewisham compares with nearby boroughs

Gun crime rose in all four nearby boroughs we checked, though by less than in Lewisham. Greenwich was the only one of the five where knife crime also rose.

Lewisham’s 536 knife offences were the 12th highest of the 32 boroughs, and its fall of 9.6 per cent almost matches City Hall’s 9.7 per cent for London. Its 96 gun crime offences were the third highest, behind Enfield on 109 and Brent on 105. These are counts, not rates.

City Hall measures its longer-term progress against 2018/19, the year before the VRU began. On that test Lewisham is down on all three measures we can compare, but by less than London each time.

• Violence with injury: Lewisham fell from 2,946 offences to 2,811, down 4.6 per cent. London fell by 15.9 per cent.
• Personal robbery: Lewisham fell from 966 offences to 787, down 18.5 per cent. London fell by 28.7 per cent.
• Gun crime: Lewisham fell from 116 offences to 96, down 17.2 per cent. London fell by 27.8 per cent.

The Lewisham figures compare 2018/19 with the 12 months to August 2026, using the Met’s older files and the current ones.

What the VRU does in Lewisham

The release gives no figure for how many of the one million live in the borough, and we could not read the VRU’s online dashboard, which holds the breakdown. But the unit’s own papers show some of what it funds here.

Lewisham is one of the MyEnds areas. An independent evaluation published by City Hall says the My Lewisham project centres “therapeutic approaches and contextual safeguarding”. It focuses on the north of the borough: the Pepys Estate in Evelyn ward, the Honor Oak Estate in Telegraph Hill ward, and the Monson and Hatcham areas of New Cross. Its work includes detached youth work, holistic and school-based mentoring, a bus project and a girls’ drama group.

The evaluation describes young people in Lewisham who “had grown weary of empty promises”. More than 100 expressed interest in a two-day “Youth Impact Weekender”, 46 applied, and 24 attended, each receiving £200 for their time. They came up with seven project ideas. “I felt like my voice, and speaking out for other young people like myself, counted,” one said.

Knife offences in Evelyn fell from 34 to 24 and stayed at 23 in Telegraph Hill. Numbers that small cannot show whether the project worked, and the evaluation looks at how the programme was run rather than at ward crime figures.

Lewisham is also listed among the 16 eligible boroughs in the tender for MyEnds 3.0, which is due to run from April 2027 until March 2029. Being eligible does not guarantee a project.

The council’s serious violence needs assessment, from January 2024, also lists a VRU-funded project called Engage, which puts youth workers in Lewisham and Bexley police stations to reach children in custody. We found no published figure for what Lewisham currently receives from the VRU.

What City Hall is claiming

The headline number needs unpacking. The release says the VRU has reached one million “young Londoners”, but its breakdown is three-quarters of a million young people plus 250,000 parents, carers, youth workers and professionals who have had training or support. That covers just over seven years and more than £140m of investment.

City Hall’s analysis of violence in London sets out the London figures:

• Hospital admissions of under-25s after assault with a knife or sharp object: 260 in the 12 months to July 2026, down 55.6 per cent on 2018/19. The fall for England outside the Met’s area was 48 per cent.
• Violence with injury: 65,678 offences in the 12 months to August 2026, 12,429 fewer than in 2018/19, although it rose by 1.3 per cent in the latest year.
• Gun crime: 1,725 offences, down 27.8 per cent on 2018/19 and 9.1 per cent on the previous 12 months.
• Personal robbery: 22,760 offences, down 28.7 per cent on 2018/19.
• Knife crime: 13,648 offences, down 9.7 per cent on the previous 12 months. City Hall says knife crime cannot be compared with the years before the VRU, because the Met changed how it records the data from April 2024.

The NHS admissions figures are published by police force area, so there is no Lewisham number.

The release also lists hospital-based youth workers, who City Hall says have guided 75 per cent of young people away from further harm; youth workers in custody suites, who have connected with nearly 17,000 young people; 60,000 targeted interventions through MyEnds; and London’s Inclusion Charter on school exclusions. City Hall says exclusion doubles a young person’s risk of being involved in violence within 12 months.

What they said

Sadiq Khan said: “I set up the Violence Reduction Unit just over seven years ago because of a clear and long-held view that we cannot arrest our way out of violence. Violent crime is preventable, not inevitable.”

He added: “Hospital admissions of young people for knife assault are down by more than half, and there are thousands of fewer victims of violence and gun crime, but I’m clear there is more to do to reduce violence and exploitation.”

The release blames national cuts to youth services between 2010 and 2019 for the rise in violence that followed, and the Mayor wants ministers to commit to consistent, multi-year funding. He said: “We are turning the tide in our efforts to tackle violence and look forward to working with the Government in order to realise our shared national ambition of halving knife crime, supported by a long-term, multi-year financial backing that our communities deserve.”

Lib Peck, the VRU’s director, said: “History shows what happens when you cut the very services working to prevent violence and so it’s crucial that we keep the momentum up so that every young person in London is safe and supported to thrive.”

Martin Griffiths, a consultant trauma surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust and Clinical Director of the Violence Reduction Network for the NHS in London, said: “A 55 per cent fall in young people admitted to hospital for knife assault is welcome news. Every one of those injuries is a tragedy however, but behind this fall are young Londoners who are safer and families spared the worst day of their lives.”

What it means for you

City Hall’s picture is only partly Lewisham’s. Knife crime here has fallen about as fast as in London, but gun crime and violence with injury have gone the other way, and the knife crime total has edged up since March.

Councillors get to question the people responsible next week. Lewisham’s Safer Stronger Communities Select Committee takes a community safety update from the police and the council on Tuesday 10 November at 7.30pm.

The police contribution lists hot spot policing in “Rushey Green spec. Catford Broadway and separately Deptford due to street crime” as a borough priority, and names knife crime as one of its focused crime types. The council’s paper says police activity on the Broadway “has ramped up in recent months”, and that making Catford town centre safer is its immediate priority there, although that section deals mainly with drug use and antisocial behaviour.

Gun and knife crime is also what residents most want dealt with. The police plan going to the committee, dated 2025, says 24 per cent of Lewisham residents named it as the first thing police should tackle locally, against 14 per cent across the Met’s area. It also says 33 per cent of residents feel local police have strong links with the community, against 38 per cent across the Met.

The Met updates its borough figures each month, so anyone can check these numbers as they change. The council’s knife crime page for young people points anyone worried about it to Childline on 0800 1111, and says to dial 999 if someone is in serious danger.