The nation’s drug crime capital can today be named as Liverpool city centre, where the trade is ruled by ruthless local gangsters.
MailOnline can reveal 359 drug-related crimes happened last year in the city’s centre, home to the Royal Albert Dock and Liverpool Central Station.
In addition to being apprehended with illegal substances such as marijuana, this type of offense includes incidents of street vending and even dismantling extensive operations or revealing drug hideouts.
Our in-depth examination reveals that this translates to a frequency of 323 drug-related offenses per 1,000 residents in that portion of Liverpool – the highest number across England and Wales.
Following closely in second place is Brownlow Hill, a district neighboring Liverpool’s downtown area and in proximity to both the University of Liverpool and John Moore’s campuses. It recorded a rate of 296 incidents per 1,000 people.
Full results of our probe, involving 37,000-plus neighbourhoods in England and Wales, is available to view below in an interactive map.
Albanian gangs now dominate Britain’s drugs market, with kingpins from the Balkan state having established direct relationships with Colombian cartels to flog cheap cocaine on our streets.
But Liverpool’s drug trade remains in the hands of local criminals, who have built strong links to their communities and a fearsome reputation that may have spooked Albanian crooks looking for a quick profit.
Using official crime data collated by police forces, the maps break down crime rates by local neighbourhoods — so-called ‘Lower layer Super Output Areas’ (LSOAs) — of roughly 1,000 to 2,000 people.
Each area is ranked by offences per 1,000 population, so you can see exactly where your neighbourhood stands on drug crime.
To find your area, select your local police force from the drop-down list and zoom into wherever you want to search.
By tapping or hovering over the area in the map, you can also see the total number of drug crimes logged, as well as the crime density (reports per square mile).
No data is available for Greater Manchester Police because the force has not updated its section of the national crime database since July 2019.
Our maps also exclude crimes committed on trains or at train stations as they are dealt with by the British Transport Police, rather than the local force.
The figures include all alleged crimes which are reported to the police and given a crime number, regardless of if the outcome of any investigation leads to a charge or not.
For our analysis, neighbourhoods are named by the electoral ward within individual authorities, meaning neighbouring areas may appear with the same name but have different statistics. That is because each ward may have numerous LSOAs.
For example, there are seven instances of ‘City Centre South’ in Liverpool, but the district E01033756, as it is known in official records, is the drug crime hotspot.
There were more than 180,000 drug offences 2023/24.
Nearly 1,600 neighbourhoods (four per cent) have a drug crime rate over 10 per 1,000 population.
Sian Banks, 25, and Eddie Burton, 23, were this month exposed as the shockingly young couple behind a £20million drug smuggling operation in Liverpool
Burton, who like Banks is from Liverpool, pleaded guilty to four charges of importing Class A and B drugs
A leaked Home Office legal document last year described Albanian criminal gangs as an ‘acute threat’ to the UK and ‘highly prevalent across serious and organised crime’ in Britain — including several murders.
National Crime Agency (NCA) research has revealed Albanian organised crime groups dominate the UK’s £5billion-a-year cocaine market across the main city and suburban areas of the UK, excluding Merseyside.
In 2023, the NCA and 43 forces across England and Wales targeted ‘West Balkan’ gangs, seizing nearly 200,000 cannabis plants worth up to £130m, £636,000 in cash, 26kg of cocaine worth up to £1m and 20 firearms.
However, the grip of local gangs on the Merseyside drugs trade was shown by the recent conviction of young couple Eddie Burton, 23, and Sian Banks, 25, for overseeing a £20million drug smuggling operation that brought hundreds of kilos of heroin, cocaine, and ketamine concealed in lorries from Europe to the UK.
The pair’s network was busted by officers from the National Crime Agency following Burton’s arrest by Spanish police in Ibiza’s Pacha nightclub in August 2023.
Another gang, based on the Wirral, were slapped with a combined 44 years in prison at the end of January for using the Royal Mail’s postal service to send £2.7million of MDMA, ecstasy, cocaine, magic mushrooms, LSD and ketamine around the country.
The group, who included step-siblings Benjamin Crane, 35, and Abbey Crane, 24, stored their drugs in a Birkenhead storage unit, before shipping orders from a post office in a local convenience store.
Liverpool Superintendent Tony Fairhurst told MailOnline that Merseyside Police perform ‘high visibility patrols and other policing activities to prevent the use of drugs particularly during the nighttime economy’ to deter drug crime, but insisted that the city ‘has a reputation as one of the safest cities in the UK to enjoy a night out’ as evidenced by its Purple flag status of 15 years.
He added: ‘Over the last 12 months we have also brought in more CCTV and improved lighting in key areas to support our work in identifying and detecting crime.
‘Like every city centre, our vibrant nightlife will account for a proportion of drug-related incidents. Sadly, some people regard taking illicit drugs on a weekend as a bit of fun – but they need to realise they are helping to fund serious organised crime and their use of violence, threats and intimidation to stay in business. We work in close partnership with the National Crime Agency and the North West Regional Crime Unit to tackle and disrupt gangs who are involved in this criminality…
‘Considering the sheer number of people who come here for a night out, incidents involving drugs are comparatively low and you are far more likely to enjoy a safe and enjoyable evening in Liverpool than witness or experience a crime’.
Professor Mathew Ashton, Director of Public Health, Liverpool City Council added that the ‘challenges we experience in Liverpool around drugs are complex and similar to those faced by other cities’ but that the council was working hard to address drug harms.
He said the city is launching a ‘new all-age community drug and alcohol service, which will build on existing provision’ in April, to support those affected by drugs.
One gang, based on the Wirral, used Royal Mail to send £2.7million of MDMA. Pictured is Benjamin Crane, 35, and Bradley Gene Grey, 43
Abbey Crane, 24, was sentenced to nine years in prison after she was found guilty after trial, while Kylie Collins, 36, was handed six years
Outside of Liverpool, Leicester Square and Covent Garden in Central London have the third highest rate or 235 per 1,000 residents.
They are followed by Halifax town centre (a rate of 162) and Bradford city centre (161).
Police were warned last year that drug lords operating in the area were ‘criminalising’ children by recruiting them to deliver drugs on bikes and do the ‘final kilometre’ of the drugs trade.
Also featuring in the top 20 are Birmingham New Street, the centre of Derby, and the neighbourhood of London with St Paul’s Cathedral and Oxford Street, which MailOnline revealed last week as the nation’s burglary capital.
The drug trade in the West Midlands capital is largely controlled by Pakistani heroin traffickers, who import the life-destroying Class A into the city.
Earlier this month, organised crime and drug supply expert Gary Carroll told MailOnline: ‘In court cases we talk about Birmingham being a port for international consignments of heroin coming into the UK, with much of it arriving via air freight.
‘The reason Birmingham is such a hive for the heroin trade is the strong familial links between people from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh and what they speak of as “back home”, where the level of corruption among customs, border agents is much higher than in the UK.
‘The Pakistanis have a strong hold in the heroin trade, so much so that Albanian organised crime groups don’t tend to get involved with heroin, which is quite unique.
‘That really emphasises the chokehold that the Pakistani community has over heroin. If you go to Luton, Bradford and Huddersfield you’ll see a strong element of heroin distribution too.’
West Midlands Police released dramatic video footage of the moment a county lines heroin and crack cocaine gang were arrested
Members of a gang who ran a county lines operation that made £1.2million a year selling heroin and crack cocaine. One of their members, Anees Mahmood (bottom row, second from left), was arrested at Birmingham Airport in September having fled to Pakistan
Arfan Mirza, a 42-year-old man from Birmingham, was convicted in 2023 of smuggling £22million worth of heroin in boxes of plastic carrier bags through UK airports.
Last year, West Midlands Police smashed one of Britain’s biggest county lines drugs gangs which made £1.2million a year.
A dozen gangsters were sentenced to more than 100 years between them for running the organised crime group, which sold vast amounts of heroin and crack cocaine.
Dramatic footage shows the moment police burst into their homes in a series of dawn raids, with the once all-powerful kingpins seen bleary-eyed as they are pulled from their beds while still in their underwear. One of their members, Anees Mahmood, was arrested at Birmingham Airport in September having fled to Pakistan.
