Police are spending much of their time breaking up neighbourhood fights, with new figures showing they were called to than 1,700 incidents at Corio, Werribee and Hoppers last year.

Melbourne is the worst area in the state for local punch-ups with more than 1,300 with Dandenong coming in second with over 1,100.

But the Werribee-Hoppers Crossing area isn’t far behind with a combined total of over 1,000.

Corio's also in the top five with nearly 700 reported incidents, or more than a dozen a week.

There were almost 42,000 reported neighbourhood dust ups across Melbourne and Geelong last year, 12 per cent higher than the year before.