A RURAL district has seen crime decrease by nearly nine per cent over the past year.

But police in Teesdale have warned that this success could mean that residents may see an increase in crime next year.

Community inspector Kevin Tuck, of Barnard Castle police, told the Teesdale Police Community Consultative Group that the district was still one of the safest places to live.

There was an average 86 crimes per 1,000 people across the south area of County Durham. In Teesdale, there were 25 crimes per 1,000 people and some areas of the dale had as few as six crimes per 1,000 people.

Since April last year, there have been 408 crimes recorded, which is a decrease of 8.9 per cent on the previous year.

Nearly a third of these crimes have been detected.

Insp Tuck said: "I can't promise it will be down by nine per cent next year.

"If crime kept going down we'd probably be in negative figures.

"Sometime we can be a victim of our own success."

The number of burglaries has dropped by 62.5 per cent to nine in the last year, although none of these had been detected.

There had also been no robberies since April last year.

The amount of reports of youths causing annoyance had risen by 41.3 per cent to 2,684 calls, but this was due to a new method of recording complaints, where every call is logged as a separate incident.

The amount of drug arrests had also decreased by 39 per cent as a result of new policing priorities which targeted the "mid-level" drug dealers.