Around one in eight women were victims of sexual assault, domestic abuse or stalking in the last year, according to new estimates.

The figures have been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of its Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year up to March 2025.

The survey found 5.2 million people aged 16 and over (10.6%) were likely to have experienced one or more of these crime types – but the percentage was higher for women (12.8%) as opposed to 8.4% of men.

It is the first time an estimate has been made of the combined prevalence of the three crimes and is the main measure used by the ONS to monitor the government’s ambition of halving violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade.

The Home Office will provide more detail later this year on how this will be used with other stats to monitor its progress.

The individual breakdown of the prevalence of crime listed on the survey suggests:

• 2.9% (around 1.4 million people) experienced stalking
• 7.8% (around 3.8 million people) experienced domestic abuse
• 1.9% (around 900,000 people) experienced sexual assault
• 8.6% (around 4.2 million people) had experienced some form of harassment

A slightly higher estimate of 5.4 million people, or 11.3%, experienced one or more of these crimes in the previous year to March 2024.

But the ONS cautioned against making comparisons between years because the estimates were still in development and subject to change.

Separate figures in the survey suggest there were 9.4 million incidents of overall crime in England and Wales in the year to March – up 7% from the previous year.

The biggest driver for this was because of a 31% increase in fraud to around 4.2 million incidents – the highest estimated number since fraud was first collated in the survey in 2017.