Croydon Central’s MP Sarah Jones continued her campaign against knife crime by demanding more support from the prime minister during the final Prime Minister’s Questions before Parliament’s summer break.

Mrs Jones asked: “Does the prime minister agree that the huge increase in knife crime has tragic consequences for families in constituencies like mine?"

"What will the prime minister do to work with me and other MPs across this house to find solutions to this blight on young lives - including looking again at the budget for policing?”

The intervention comes as Mrs Jones, fellow Croydon MP Steve Reed and Council Leader Tony Newman wrote to the Home Secretary Amber Rudd highlighting the situation in Croydon.

The letter points out two cases where police in Croydon admitted they did not have sufficient officers to properly deal with knife crime incidents and presses for “urgent intervention to ensure the police are properly equipped to keep the streets of Croydon safe from knife crime.”

Mrs Jones’s question to Theresa May also included a plea to look again at budgets for policing.

Cuts to police budgets have seen Croydon lose eight in ten of its community police officers, while nationally frontline police numbers have been cut by 20,000.

In 12 months to March 2017, the number of young people injured in knife crime in Croydon rose by 76 per cent.

New figures obtained from the Metropolitan Police under Freedom of Information laws have revealed a total of 571 knife crime offences were recorded in the borough in 2016 – more than ten offences per week.