West Midlands Police has failed to record more than 16,600 violent crimes each year, with some victims "let down and not believed", a watchdog has said.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) rated the force as "inadequate".

Only 78.2% of violent crime and 89.2% of sexual offences reported were actually recorded, it found.

The inspectorate said the force was "failing victims of crime."

About three quarters of police forces around the country have already been inspected and of those, two-thirds were rated as either "inadequate" or "requiring improvement."

The HMICFRS report said the recording rate by one of the biggest forces in the country remained "unacceptable and must be urgently addressed".

"The recording rates for violent crime and sexual offences remain a cause of concern," it said.

'Victims let down'

"Too often the force is still failing victims of crime, including domestic abuse victims."

In 2017 the same watchdog said five out of six reported crimes were recorded by West Midlands Police - but 38,800 each year were not.

It was re-examined for violent crime and sexual offences in 2018, with inspectors auditing a sample of reports from 1 March to 31 May.

But inspectors were not able to look at other types of crime because the force was updating its systems.

Of the 2,176 reports of crime audited, 470 related to domestic abuse - of these 354 were recorded.

Figures showed 116 were not recorded, including 95 offences classed as violent, such as common assaults, ABH, harassment and malicious communications.

The report said: "We found several examples of attending officers letting down victims by simply not believing them.

"Some incident logs contained closing comments that were completely different to the initial call and recorded no crime, without an adequate explanation."

Deputy Ch Con Louisa Rolfe, from the force, claimed the watchdog had failed to recognise its strengths in recording crime overall.

She said: "It is frustrating that, despite substantial progress, our grading has remained as inadequate.

"This report focuses upon our inspection of reports of violent crime and sexual offences.

"It does not include the results of other crimes, and consequently it has not recognised the force's overall crime recording from which we have good, reliable crime accuracy."

Ms Rolfe said the force was confident that its current position was "much improved" and it could not be criticised for failing to put more resources into crime recording.

The watchdog also published a report on Leicestershire, which was again rated as "inadequate."

Of the 30 forces reported upon in 2017, Leicestershire was the worst.

While there were some improvements for 2018, the watchdog found the overall recording rate and the rates for violent crime and sexual offences were too low.

In 2018, the force recorded around 84.1% of reported crime, up 8.3% from the previous year, and 78.9% of violent crime, a 13.1% increase since 2017.

For sexual offences, 87.8% were recorded, up 8.4% on the previous year.

In terms of cancelled crimes, HMICFRS said Leicestershire's standards had become worse. Among 49 victims who should have been told a crime had been cancelled, 15 were not informed, the report said.

The watchdog said: "It remains a concern that the force does not always inform victims about the cancellation of their recorded crime."

Leicestershire Ch Con Simon Cole said: "Crime recording is a complex issue and this inspection looks at our technical compliance with a national crime recording system - something which is focused on numbers, categories, how crimes are manually logged on systems and then audited."