A new police website charting the crime statistics of every street in England and Wales went live today, then crashed just hours later.

Thanks to a record number of visitors eagerly entering their postcodes to find out just how many ill deeds have been committed on their doorstep, the crime map at www.police.uk was crippled, leaving the Government red faced after a media heavy launch.

"[The site] has been receiving 75,000 hits a minute, and we've had four and a half million in the last hour, which is a sign of the huge interest there is in this," claimed policing minister Nick Herbert in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He went on to call the site a "very important step forward in accountability and transparency".

Which all well and good, if it's working. Faced with epic loading waits, for the time being citizens have had to go back to simply not knowing how much crime their street saw in December 2010. Which critics would argue is no bad thing.

Opponents of the initiative say the site will only help to fuel the public's fear of crime, while the Government claims the maps will change the relationship between police and public, enabling residents to hold their local law enforcement to account.

We reckon its up to each person to make up their own mind. If only we could get on the bleedin' site to see what all the fuss is about...