Local crime statistics for any UK address
The 14 Police.uk crime categories, what they mean, and what the counts within 500m of a property actually tell you (and what they don't).
112
crimes within 500m of the median property checked, in the last 12 months.
Across the properties checked on Move Insights, the median address had 112 reported crimes within a five minute walk over the past year. The mean is 180, pulled higher by a small number of central-city properties; the busiest 10% of addresses had 424 or more, and the noisiest single one had 1,513. The most common category by volume across all the addresses we've checked is Violence and sexual offences (32% of incidents).
The 14 Police.uk crime categories
Every Police.uk crime falls into one of fourteen categories. The percentages below are the national split across 4,065,434 incidents recorded in the last 12 months.
| Category | % nationally |
|---|---|
| Violence and sexual offences | 31.7% |
| Anti-social behaviour | 16.3% |
| Criminal damage and arson | 9.0% |
| Public order | 7.9% |
| Other theft | 7.8% |
| Vehicle crime | 6.5% |
| Burglary | 4.7% |
| Drugs | 4.0% |
| Shoplifting | 3.8% |
| Other crime | 2.8% |
| Theft from the person | 1.7% |
| Robbery | 1.6% |
| Possession of weapons | 1.2% |
| Bicycle theft | 1.1% |
Source: Police.uk, last 12 months, refreshed 1 May 2026.
Why postcode-level matters more than borough-level
A borough averages over hundreds of streets. Useful for comparing one borough to another. Almost useless for telling you what your road feels like at 9pm.
Take Camden as a borough. Hampstead High Street and Camden Town's busiest junctions are both in Camden, both labelled with the same borough-level number, and they have completely different crime profiles. The first sees mostly low-level anti-social behaviour from late-night drinkers; the second sees vehicle crime, theft, and weekend public-order incidents at scale. The borough average smooths both into one figure that describes neither.
Walk five minutes in any direction from a quiet residential street and the picture can shift completely. The 500m radius we use for property checks is roughly that walk. It captures the road and the immediate few blocks, which is what actually shapes daily life at the property.
What crime data doesn't tell you
- Reported is not the same as actual. A lot of low-level crime never gets reported. A bike lock cut and a phone snatched off a table outside a cafe often go unrecorded. Areas with higher reporting rates can look worse on paper than areas with lower ones, even at equal real risk.
- Locations are deliberately blurred. Police forces snap each crime to one of around 750,000 anonymised points across England and Wales, to protect victim privacy. A crime mapped to your front door could have happened anywhere within roughly 250m. Our 500m count is an honest approximation, not a forensic one.
- There's a one to two month publishing lag. Police.uk releases monthly. The most recent six weeks of crime are usually not in the data yet. A spike that started three weeks ago will appear next month, not today.
- Forces classify inconsistently. What one force records as "anti-social behaviour" another may log as "public order". The 14 categories are standardised at output but data entry varies. Comparing two forces' raw counts directly can mislead.
How to read crime data as a buyer
Read the category mix, not the headline number
A city-centre street may have twenty times the crime count of a quiet suburb but most of it will be late-night public-order incidents that don't affect daytime residents. A quiet street with persistent vehicle crime may be more relevant to you than a busy one with thousands of unrelated incidents. Look at the breakdown.
Anti-social behaviour as a quality-of-life signal
High anti-social behaviour counts often track noise complaints, public drinking, and persistent low-level disturbance. They tell you about the texture of evenings on the street more than personal-safety risk. Visit the road on a Friday night before deciding what the number means.
Vehicle crime as a parking signal
Streets with high vehicle crime usually have on-street parking and limited overlooking. If you park on the road, this matters. If the property has off-street parking or a garage, it largely doesn't.
Burglary as an insurance signal
Insurers price contents and buildings cover off postcode-level burglary rates. Two otherwise similar postcodes a mile apart can have meaningfully different premiums. Worth getting a quote on a property before you commit.
Avoid the "this area is dangerous" verdict
Total crime counts are a noisy signal of personal risk. Most reported crimes don't involve buyers in any practical sense. Use the data to ask better questions, not to write off entire areas.
What we see across the reports we've run
The five most common categories within 500m of the addresses we've checked, aggregated across the sample.
| Category | Incidents | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Violence and sexual offences | 22,682 | 32.1% |
| Anti-social behaviour | 11,228 | 15.9% |
| Criminal damage and arson | 6,259 | 8.9% |
| Public order | 5,737 | 8.1% |
| Other theft | 5,221 | 7.4% |
Source: Move Insights, refreshed 1 May 2026.
Common questions
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