Some areas fared worse when it came to solving crimes

They showed that police had failed to solve up to 85% of cases in some areas.

Candleriggs in Glasgow and Tollcross in Edinburgh were two of the worst beats, while the Stirling area appeared to have the best clear-up rate, at 90%.

A police spokesman said the size of beats was a factor and insisted more crime was being solved.

The figures were obtained by The Sunday Times newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act.

Crimes unsolved

They showed that in Candleriggs in Glasgow only 26% of 600 serious crimes - such as murder, rape, sexual offences and knife crime - were solved last year.

In the city's George Square, more than half of all 312 serious crime were unsolved.

One of the worst beats in Edinburgh was Tollcross, where just a third of crimes were solved out of 1,990 cases.

In the capital's New Town area, two-thirds of crimes - mainly theft - were solved out of 3,942 cases.

On the whole, clear-up rates are at an historically high level Scottish Executive spokeswoman

In Aberdeen city centre, more than 4,000 crimes were committed with 2,300 being solved - a clear-up rate of 55%.

But the picture was different in the west end of the city where only one in five of about 750 crimes was solved.

In Dundee, 35% of the 225 crimes reported in the Blackness area were solved, compared with 79% in West Port, where police had to contend with the much higher figure of 1,185 crimes.

But the paper found that in Central Scotland, criminals in Stirling were more likely to be caught, with 90% of 650 crimes being solved.

The Scottish Executive said the figures were not representative of the overall picture in Scotland.

A spokeswoman said: "On the whole, clear-up rates are at an historically high level, with nearly half of all recorded crimes solved, compared to less than a third in the 1980s.

"We've got more than 16,000 police officers in Scotland which is up since 2003 and we've been increasing the number of policing support staff."

'Postcode lottery'

But the Scottish Conservatives said the figures underlined an urgent need for more police officers.

Party leader Annabel Goldie said: "We have been advocating the need to reduce bureaucracy and red tape surrounding our police forces so more time and effort can be spent fighting crime.

"Yet there are fewer and fewer police in our communities. The first duty of government is to protect their citizens and if that isn't being done they are failing in their duty."

The Scottish National Party claimed ill thought-out legislation designed to seek "headlines rather than results" was behind the figures.