Hate crime reports have soared in the week since the UK voted to leave the EU, police figures show.
Since Britain’s historic vote to leave the EU last Thursday, 331 incidents have been reported to national police records website True Vision compared to the weekly average of 63 - a five-fold increase.
The huge spike was revealed by the National Police Chiefs Council whose head Sara Thornton said the analysis reflected an increase in hostility towards migrant communities.
Writing in her blog, she said “verbal abuse, negative social media commentary including xenophobic language, antimigrant leafleting and, in very limited numbers, physical assaults" were all being reported by migrants.
Ms Thornton said all police forces have been asked to provide weekly hate crime figures to monitor the scale of the problem.
She wrote: “This is something we do after major national and international events where there is likely to be an impact on levels of hate crime.
“Historically spikes in tensions and hate crime have returned to previous levels relatively quickly."
Organisations have also noted an increase in reports of Islamophobia and other hate crime.
