An extra 600 dog attacks took place across London in 2023, the Standard can reveal.
Over 8,400 dog attacks were recorded in the capital between 2021 and 2023, with the number of attacks steadily rising, Metropolitan Police figures show.
Last year there were 3,389 dog attacks across the city, 613 more than the year before, a Freedom of Information request has found.
It was an increase of 22 per cent on the 2022 figure of 2,776.
The police recorded an extra 1,122 dog attacks in 2023 compared with 2021, when there were 2,267 attacks.
The data includes a vicious attack in November when a woman was left fighting for her life after being mauled by a dog in south-east London.
A man involved in the attack on Bedwell Road, Belvedere, was also taken to a major trauma centre for treatment.
The dog was tasered by police and died while being held in a separate room by officers.
Happened today at Stratford station
— London & UK Street News (@CrimeLdn) December 10, 2023
Dog attack at Stratford station this evening, women couldn’t control her dog, the man being attacked offered to hold one of the dogs on the lead so she could attach the harness properly to the one dog.
The dog then jumped on the guy and… pic.twitter.com/qD8f0Ucr2D
A dog was also filmed attacking a man at Stratford train station last month.
In October an XL Bully was destroyed and seized after a one-year-old boy was injured in a dog attack in Greenwich.
The attack happened outside the Hilton hotel on Catherine Grove and the boy was treated at hospital.
Four people also turned up at a London hospital in July with “puncture wounds” after being attacked by a dog in Hammersmith.
A 48-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of being in charge of a dangerously out of control dog.
The Met Police had to shoot an “out of control” dog which killed another animal in Ealing on Sunday, during the latest high profile dog attack in the city.
Footage posted on social media showed a firearms officer in a stand-off with the black dog, whose breed is unknown, as it dragged a smaller dog along the pavement in Queens Avenue.
Concern about dangerous dogs intensified after a number of high-profile incidents in 2023.
Ian Price, 52, was killed after being attacked by two XL bullies in Staffordshire in September.
From February 1, it will be a criminal offence to own an XL bully dog in England and Wales without a certificate.
In February four-year-old Alice Stones was mauled to death by a pet dog in a back garden in Milton Keynes.
There were 16 deaths by dog bites across the country in 2023, up from six in 2022, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.
There were no more than five deaths a year between 1991 and 2021, the data shows.
