Bedford vs Luton

Side by side

Rank 1 is the highest recorded rate. Both areas are local authority areas, so the two populations are counted the same way and the rates are directly comparable.

Offence by offence

The mix differs more than the totals do. Bedford records about 2.2 times as much bicycle theft per resident. Luton records about 1.8 times as much theft from the person and 1.4 times as much robbery per resident.

Both places since 2011

Each line is a rolling twelve-month rate per 1,000 residents, so seasonality is taken out and the two areas are on the same scale despite their different sizes.

Questions

Is Bedford safer than Luton?

Bedford and Luton record much the same amount of crime for their size: 92.6 and 92.7 offences per 1,000 residents in the 12 months to June 2026. Both figures are averages across a whole local authority, and neither area is uniform: the gap between neighbourhoods inside one of these places is usually wider than the gap between the two of them.

What does this comparison not tell you?

Recorded crime counts what the police wrote down, so a place where people report more looks worse than a place where they report less, whatever actually happened. Both figures are averages across a whole local authority: a town with one busy centre and quiet suburbs carries a rate that describes neither. And the denominator is residents, so somewhere that fills up with commuters, students or shoppers by day records crime against a population it is not credited with. How the figures work sets all of this out.

Where else can I compare?

Pick any other two areas, or start from Bedford or Luton and use the neighbouring areas listed on each. The ranked lists of the safest places and the highest crime rates cover all of them at once.