Virtually every part of Islington suffers from levels of car crime that far exceed both the London and national average, according to new figures revealed by Islington Council’s opposition Lib-Dem group.

They show all postcodes in the borough, apart from one, are in the top 40 of the capital’s more than 110 postal districts. Every single part of the borough in the top 20 per cent of car crime hotspots in London.

But police say recent crime prevention ­efforts have brought the figures down and Islington Council’s executive member for community safety said that they were due to a “statistical quirk”.

The figures, from motoring website honestjohn.co.uk, follow last week’s revelation that EC2 – which covers parts of Finsbury – is the worst in London with 1,228 vehicle crimes per 10,000 cars.

Cllr David Wilson, Islington Lib-Dem community safety spokesman, said: “This is the third piece of bad news on crime for Islington residents in as many weeks.

“Smartphone snatches are out of control on the borough’s streets. The council is failing to meet its targets on burglary, ­robbery, criminal damage and violence.

“Now we see that Islington has some of the worst rates of vehicle crime in the capital. Yet we hear nothing from the borough’s Labour leaders about what they are going to do.

“Labour councillors promised to be tough on crime. But even though nationally crime seems to be falling, the crimes that most affect Islington residents are going up all the time – street robberies especially.”

He added: “It’s time for Labour to explain to residents exactly what they are doing to tackle these crimes in Islington.”

Ch Insp Claire Clark, from ­Islington Police, said: “Theft from motor vehicles Islington is in reduction. There have been 656 offences this year compared to 777 last year, which is a reduction of 15.6 per cent.

“For theft of vehicles we are also down 8.4 per cent. A number are for scooters for which we have done quite a bit of crime prevention and have supplied locks for motorbike and scooter owners in the past.

“Most of the theft from has traditionally been in car parks and the Neighbourhood Policing Teams have worked with the security at car parks to improve lighting and so on which has helped.”

Cllr Paul Convery, Islington Council’s executive member for community safety, said that not only had car crime come down by more than 25 per cent over the past three years, the figures were misleading.

He said: “A lot of these high rates are down to a statistical quirk.

“Because they are worked out as crimes per number of cars, the low car ownership in Islington, particularly in the south of the borough, makes things look a lot worse than they are.

“In addition, a lot are thefts from vans which are driving through on business - just part and parcel of being in central London.

“These figures give the impression that poor Islington reisdents are constantly having their cars nicked from outside their houses, and nothing could be further from the truth.”