Violent crime has risen sharply according to the latest Government figures.

Home Office statistics show robberies, muggings and other acts of violence are up by 39 per cent across Sussex in just a year.

Police and community workers have attempted to blame the increase on a change in the method for recording crime.

Sussex Police even suggested that many of its officers were over-recording crime because they had no idea how the system worked.

But the statistics have generated alarm among civic leaders who dismissed the excuses and warned not enough was being done to eliminate drug abuse.

There were 19,500 violent crimes recorded in the 12 months to April 2004 but this had risen to 27,093 by April 2005.

The statistics also show there were 18 violent offences per 1,000 population in 2004 to 05.

Brighton and Hove, Horsham, Lewes and Wealden saw increases of more than 50 per cent between 2003-04 and 2004-05.

Rises were also recorded in Adur, Arun, Chichester, Crawley, Eastbourne, Hastings, Mid Sussex, Rother and Worthing.

Dave Furness, community safety manager of the Safer Hastings Partnership, said: "Hastings has never been safer and crime continues to reduce year-on-year.

"Last year there were 1,000 fewer victims of crime, for instance.

"But changes in reporting violent crime have distorted this area of crime and we would urge people to look behind the headline figure.

"In Hastings in 2003/04 public place violent crime was decreasing by 6.4 per cent due to a raft of measures such as Barwatch.

"But in the middle of this fantastic achievement a whole basketful of extra offences were included as violent crime.

"Therefore breaches of antisocial behaviour, dog bites and a lot of non-contact offences were being classed as violent crime, creating this perception of a huge explosion in this crime."

Detective Superintendent Kevin Moore, of Sussex Police, who is responsible for the day-to-day policing of Brighton and Hove, said: "Across the force we have identified a problem with over-recording and counting crimes wrongly.

"We are recording incidents as crimes that shouldn't be recorded and there has been an inconsistent approach on occasions. Different officers are interpreting what they are presented with in a different way."

He cited harassment and common assault as two examples of crimes that were often over-recorded.

Threatening text messages had been recorded as harassment and therefore included in the violent crime category, when they should have properly been dealt with under telecommunications legislation.

And some officers reacted to fights involving several people by filing multiple reports of common assault rather than a single crime of affray.

Mr Moore attributed the problem to the inexperience of staff at the year-old crime reporting investigation bureau and said police were developing a training package to improve the accuracy of crime reporting.

Mr Moore said: "There has been an increase in reporting but no increase in real crime. Brighton and Hove city centre is safer now than it was 27 years ago when I joined the force."