ASSAULTS with knives and other sharp objects led to hundreds of hospital admissions involving Dorset residents in less than a decade, figures show.

Anti-knife crime charity the Ben Kinsella Trust called for more to be done to educate children about the impact of knife crime, with two in five stabbing admissions across England involving young people.

Between April 2012 and March this year, there were around 260 admissions of patients from the Dorset policing area following an assault with a sharp object, according to data from NHS Digital.

Of those, around 25 per cent involved people aged under 25.

Around 35 admissions followed attacks on people from the area in 2020-21 – the most recent period with complete data.

Figures are rounded to the nearest five to protect patient confidentiality.

The police force covering the patient's area of residence is recorded, meaning the assault could have happened elsewhere.

English NHS hospitals have recorded more than 38,000 hospital admissions of patients from police force areas in both England and Wales since 2012-13 – 40 per cent of them involving young people.

And youngsters accounted for the same proportion of 4,000 hospital admissions recorded nationally in 2020-21.

Patrick Green, CEO of the Ben Kinsella Trust – a knife crime charity established in memory of a young stabbing victim – said the statistics were "shocking".

He said: "These figures show that knife crime remains a significant problem for the criminal justice system and the NHS.

"But more worryingly, they show that we are failing to protect young people.

"We need to do far more to educate young people about the dangers of knife crime."

Separate Home Office crime figures for England and Wales show that in Dorset, police recorded 321 serious knife crimes in the year, including three murders, 171 assaults involving injury and seven knife-related rapes or sexual offences.

However, recent data from the Office for National Statistics shows Dorset has one of the lowest knife crime rates (41.3 per 100,000) of all 43 police forces across the country.

Nationally this places Dorset as the eight safest county.

Chief Superintendent Mark Callaghan from Dorset Police said: “Dorset is one of the safest places to live in the UK, and we know we do not have as much knife crime as seen in other areas of the country.

“However, we are not complacent, and we continue to be proactive to educate and prevent knife crime. Supporting national weeks of action is just one way of doing this.”

Police and crime commissioner, David Sidwick, said: “Although Dorset is one of the safest places to live in the UK, there is no room for complacency when it comes to dealing with knife crime in our county.

“Keeping individuals and communities safe from knife crime is paramount.”