JEWISH residents in Greater Manchester were the victims more than 200 hate crimes last year in the form of vandalism, physical and verbal abuse, hate mail and other threats, a study has found.

The Community Security Trust, a charity that protects British Jews from anti-Semitism and related threats, analysed data from Greater Manchester Police and other forces and found four incidents took place in Bolton.

Dave Rich, the trust’s deputy director of communications and the principal author of the Anti-Semitic Incidents 2016 Report, said: “There’s a relative small Jewish population there so we get relatively few incidents.

“Compare that to Bury, where we had 48 incidents last year.

“That’s what we would expect in terms of the proportions.”

He added: “None of the four incidents in Bolton involved violence or damage to property. Three were abusive behaviour, which could be indirect threats like graffiti or on social media, and one was a direct threat, which uses more explicit language.”

The number of hate crimes against the Jewish community in Greater Manchester in 2016 was recorded as 205, which was actually a fall on the year before although the charity warns these kind of incidents are under-reported. Its reports said: “Taken broadly, and allowing for rough generalisations, the statistics show that anti-Semitic incidents in Greater Manchester are more likely to involve random street racism – what might be called anti-Semitic hooliganism – against individual Jews.”

Bolton had 174 residents who described themselves as Jewish in the 2011 census and the last Bolton synagogue closed in 1969.