The crime map of England and Wales

This map shades every one of the 330 local authority areas in England and Wales by the crimes its police force recorded per 1,000 residents in the 12 months to June 2026. The England and Wales rate is 91.2 per 1,000, and 131 areas sit above it, fewer than half, because a handful of city centres pull the average up.

330 local authority areas mapped
91.2 England and Wales average, crimes per 1,000 residents
131 areas above that average

What the colours mean. Each area is shaded by crimes the police recorded per 1,000 residents, against the England and Wales average rather than against the other areas on screen. That matters: shading by rank would paint a fifth of the country dark whatever the actual rates, which is the commonest way a crime map misleads. Rates are not a measure of how much crime happened: somewhere people report more looks worse than somewhere people report less. And a town centre carries the crime of everyone who visits it against the few who live there. How the figures work sets all of it out.

The map needs JavaScript. Every area it shades is listed below it, with the same figures.

Against the England & Wales average less than half below about average above more than double no usable data

Select an area on the map for its figures, or open its page.

Select an area to open its page. Outlines are Office for National Statistics local authority boundaries, generalised for a map at this scale, so coastlines are approximate. 10 areas are drawn in grey: their police force has stopped filing full returns, so there is no rate to shade them with.

Every area on the map

By county, with the same rate the map shades.

Clwyd

Devon

Merseyside

Powys

West Sussex

West Yorkshire

How to read it

The five colours are ratios to the England and Wales rate of 91.2 crimes per 1,000 residents, so the same colour means the same thing everywhere on the map. An area shaded rust records more than double the national rate; one shaded teal records less than half of it.

The pattern the map draws is mostly a pattern of city centres. Recorded crime concentrates where people gather rather than where they live, and because the rate divides by residents only, a district holding a shopping centre, a station or a nightlife strip will read high even when the streets people live on are quiet. That is why the darkest shapes are small and urban, and why comparing a city district with the countryside around it says more about what the two places are for than about how safe they are.

For a ranked list of the same figures, see the safest places to live and where crime is highest, or put two places side by side with the comparison tool.

Figures cover the 12 months to June 2026, the most recent month any force has published. Police data arrives roughly two months in arrears.