A PIONEERING crime-mapping system is to be turned off by West Yorkshire Police.

The Beatcrime website is to be turned off after more than six years of providing a detailed picture of crime to residents.

Police Authority members took the decision to close down the Beatcrime website following the success of the national crime mapping website launched by the Home Office in January.

Beatcrime was launched in February, 2005.

Beatcrime will remain live until Sunday but after that visitors will be informed of its closure and then transferred to the national website.

Clr Mark Burns-Williamson, who chairs the authority, said: “Beatcrime was the first crime mapping site which used dots on maps to show people where crime had occurred in their local area. It was clearly ahead of its time, because it has taken six years for anyone else to provide the level of detail that we believed from the start should be available to local people.

“It was a brave and ground-breaking decision that we took over six years ago to launch Beatcrime and the recent launch of the national crime mapping site a testament that we made the right decision.

“We always wanted Beatcrime to be a national site, but other forces and police authorities were not as keen as we were.

“It has taken action by the last two Governments to make this facility available to everyone.

“There’s now the possibility that visitors could be confused by the apparent differences between the information on the two sites.”