How the safety score works

1. 1

   Find the neighbourhood

   The ONS Postcode Directory tells us which Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) the postcode sits in. LSOAs are small statistical areas of roughly 1,000 to 3,000 people. If a postcode has no LSOA, we use the nearest one.

2. 2

   Count the crime

   We add up every crime Police.uk recorded in that LSOA in the latest month it has published, across all categories.

3. 3

   Rank it against every other neighbourhood

   We take the same month’s total for every LSOA in the country, split them into ten equal groups, and see which group this one falls into.

4. 4

   Turn the rank into a score

   The tenth of neighbourhoods with the least crime scores 100, the next tenth 90, and so on down to 10 for the tenth with the most.

Because the score is a national ranking, it tells you how a neighbourhood compares, not how much crime there is. A score of 80 means the area is in the second-lowest tenth for recorded crime that month.

Crime by category. The month’s total split into Police.uk’s categories, such as anti-social behaviour, violence and burglary.

Trend. Crime in the latest three months compared with the same three months a year earlier, so seasonal swings and a single busy month don’t drive it.

Burglary and vehicle crime. The neighbourhood’s burglaries and vehicle crimes over the last 12 months, ranked against every other neighbourhood in the same way. A year is used because most neighbourhoods record none in a single month.

Rate per 1,000 residents. Each category’s count divided by the neighbourhood’s Census 2021 population.

Wards and districts. Area pages add up their neighbourhoods and rank them against other wards or districts, not against single neighbourhoods.

When our copy has no figures. If a neighbourhood isn’t in our copy of the archive yet, the report shows no score rather than an estimate.

• It only counts crime reported to and recorded by the police.
• It’s a count, not a rate per resident. Town centres, stations and shopping streets see many more people than live there, so they tend to score lower.
• One month can be noisy, especially in quiet areas where a handful of incidents moves the rank. Check the trend as well.
• Every postcode in the same neighbourhood gets the same score.
• Police.uk moves each crime to a nearby anonymous map point to protect victims, so incidents near a boundary can land in the neighbouring area.
• Police.uk usually publishes about two months after the month ends.
• Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime to Police.uk, so Scottish postcodes have no safety score.