FEWER crimes are being prosecuted at crown courts in Wiltshire, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

This drop in cases is happening in most areas of England and Wales, as legal experts say police do not have enough resources to complete investigations to the standard required by the Crown Prosecution Service, leading to cases being shelved.

The latest MoJ data shows that 114 cases reached crown courts in Wiltshire between April and June, down from 162 over the same period in 2014.

Crown courts deal with the most serious crimes, such as murder, robbery and sexual offences. Magistrates’ courts can only hand out a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment, so crimes which require longer jail terms go to trial at crown court.

The most common type of offence dealt with in the Wiltshire Local Criminal Justice Board area was physical violence against a person, accounting for 23 per cent of all crown court appearances.

The CPS carried out six prosecutions for robbery over the time period, 5 per cent of the total cases.

Ian Kelcey, a solicitor at the Law Society, said: “The CPS are now demanding that the cases have to be trial-ready before they will authorise going to trial.

“The problem is that police forces do not have the manpower to put together the information the CPS wants and I suspect a lot of cases have just not been pursued because it is too much trouble from them.”

Only two of the 48 Local Criminal Justice Boards dealt with more cases than four years ago.

In Wiltshire, sexual offence cases were prosecuted 15 times, 14 fewer than four years earlier, despite the number of sexual crimes reported to police almost doubling since 2014.