Police are still falling short of hitting key targets for solving crime six months after being challenged over how it planned to turn around a dip in performance.

The latest figures for April to December last year show only one in every 11 burglaries was solved by police and little more than one in six robberies detected.

The performance is better than last summer but, according to the ‘Performance Framework’, it is still missing its six key detection targets.

The collapse in crime detections last April was blamed on the restructure of the force as part of a £50 million efficiency drive.

At that point little more than 16 per cent of crime was detected. By November overall detection rates had risen to about 21 per cent.

While the performance is better than last summer, when senior officers were told they had to improve by the ruling Police Authority, only 37 per cent of serious violent crime was detected between April and December last year against a target of 50 per cent.