The number of hate crimes in Norfolk has fallen over the last year with police saying the offences will not be tolerated in the county.

Figures released to the Eastern Daily Press show that between July 2011 and June there were 654 hate crimes reported to Norfolk police.

The figures relate to five hate crime categories of race, homophobic/transphobic, faith, disabled and other and are described as a 'hate incident which constitutes a criminal offence perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate'.

A breakdown of the statistics shows the most reports of hate crime was for the race category with 331 reports and the second largest category was the disabled with 117 reports.

The figures show that in total there were 73 fewer reported incidents than the previous period of July 2010 to June 2011, which saw a total of 727 reports.

A Norfolk police spokesman said: 'Norfolk Constabulary takes every incident of hate crime very seriously – no incident is seen as trivial and every report is investigated thoroughly. Hate crime is a menace to society and can have a devastating and often life-changing impact on the victim.

'Hate crime will not be tolerated and Norfolk Constabulary continues to work closely with partnership organisations through the Hate Free Norfolk initiative.'

In Suffolk, the only figures available were for a 12-month period over 2011/12 which showed there were 601 hate crimes.

For the last three, Suffolk Police has been involved with councils in the Suffolk Hate Crime Service, which has a helpline and 15 third party reporting centres across the county, which also has a Hate Crime Partnership.