WILTSHIRE is suffering more race hate crime than multi-cultural Bristol, new figures claim. But in Swindon, police deny such incidents are on the rise.

There were 28 people charged with a racially motivated offence in Wiltshire in 2001/2, compared to 27 in Avon and Somerset.

The total in Wiltshire rose by one on the previous year, while Avon and Somerset - which includes Bristol - recorded a fall of 11.

The Crown Prosecution Service claims Wiltshire's police force is failing to pass on information about alleged racial incidents, piling extra work onto the CPS. Officers failed to supply a copy of the racist incident report, a practice designed to speed up the prosecution process, in every one of the 28 cases in 2001/2.

Wiltshire has been criticised by the CPS, which depends on the reports to identify whether an incident should be judged as racist.

However, county officers performed well in the proportion of cases they correctly judged to be racially motivated. Of the 28 incidents, 26 - or 93 per cent - were identified as racist by the force and only two by the CPS. The national average was 89 per cent.

Insp Bob Markham, of Swindon police, said that in Swindon between last April and this month there had been 148 recorded racially or religiously aggravated crimes. There were also 39 recorded incidents such as racial name-calling, and 29 recorded homophobic crimes.

He said his team had been successful in raising the number of reports of such incidents but it didn't mean there was a rise in hate crime.