What it measures. How serious the crime recorded here is, not how much of it there is. Each recorded crime is weighted by the typical sentence for that kind of offence (the Office for National Statistics Crime Severity Score), so a robbery counts about 76 times a shoplifting offence. The total per resident is ranked against every neighbourhood. 10 means among the safest tenth.
Data. Street-level crime from data.police.uk, September 2016 to August 2026. Weights: ONS Crime Severity Score, year ending March 2025.
- Anti-social behaviour is not a crime and has no weight, so it is left out of the score. It is shown on its own line.
- The weights come from sentences in 2015-2019 and one weight covers a whole police.uk category: violence includes both minor assaults and rape, and the data does not say which. A town with more serious cases than the national mix is under-scored.
- Some forces have missing months (Greater Manchester published nothing after June 2019). We use the months that exist and say so on the page.
- A neighbourhood's score is blended with the neighbourhoods around it, because police.uk records each crime at an approximate location, often the middle of a street that sits on a boundary. Three quarters is its own rate, one quarter the average of the neighbourhoods it touches, weighted by residents. Crimes recorded on a map point within 30 m of a neighbourhood boundary are shared equally between the neighbourhoods on each side, because the point usually sits on the boundary road itself. Where the map shows a neighbourhood's score, its own score is shown as well when it differs.
- Busy city and town centres are not scored: few people live there and many visit, so crime per resident would mislead.
- It counts crimes that were reported and recorded, not every crime. In Scotland there is no Safety score yet; Living covers it.
- On the map you can filter by crime type. The filter changes the crime figures, the Safety score and the map colours, and compares with the national figure for the same types.
- Crime by Postcode is a guide, not advice. Visit the area before you decide.
Read the full method
