The home secretary has said his department is continuing to build a better Britain.

Publishing the Home Office annual report, David Blunkett hailed falling crime, record police numbers and stronger border controls.

The report also sets out the key departmental plans for the year ahead, with social inclusion and citizenship policies being pushed up the agenda.

Blunkett cast the Home Office as the "department of the citizen".

"Our work is about individual empowerment and building communities from the bottom upwards," he said.

At the end of his second year at the helm, Blunkett praised the police as being essential to bringing crime levels down and dealing with his current priority, anti-social behaviour.

"We have enacted major reforms to the police service in this country to enable police to fight crime more effectively," the home secretary said.

"We now have record numbers of police patrolling the streets and they are supported by more than a thousand community support officers."

The issue of asylum, which has increasingly dogged the department in recent years, was dealt with in the upbeat report by focusing on border control measures.

"We have significantly improved security around the Channel Tunnel, moved UK border controls to France and installed high-tech screening equipment along the European coastline to stop illegal immigrants reaching Britain," the report claims.