Crime over time in North Somerset

Recorded crime in North Somerset rose 19% between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026, from 16,347 to 19,522.

19,522 recorded crime, year to July 2026
+19% change between the year to July 2017 and the year to July 2026
1,937 in August 2024, the busiest month in this period

Month by month

12-month average Each month
5001,0001,5002,0000Covid lockdown1,627201720182019202020212022202320242025Jul 2026
Recorded crime each month in North Somerset, August 2016 to July 2026. The darker line is the average month across the twelve ending at each point, which takes the seasons out.

Year by year

Calendar years inside the period. A change is given only between two complete years, because a year missing months is not comparable with one that has them all.

Recorded crime by calendar year, August 2016 to July 2026
Year Recorded Change on the year before Note
2016 6,867 August to December only
2017 16,018
2018 16,606 +3.7%
2019 17,566 +5.8%
2020 16,507 −6.0%
2021 15,871 −3.9%
2022 16,451 +3.7%
2023 17,416 +5.9%
2024 19,463 +11.8%
2025 19,249 −1.1%
2026 11,229 January to July only

What a change in recorded crime does and does not mean

Everything here is crime the police recorded, which is not the same thing as crime that happened. Three things move recorded crime that have nothing to do with how much of it there is.

  • How carefully the police record. A 2014 inspection found forces failing to record around one crime in five reported to them. Recording was tightened in response, and recorded violence and public order offences climbed for years afterwards without the Crime Survey for England and Wales finding a rise to match.
  • How much the police go looking. Drug offences and possession of weapons are mostly found by officers searching people, so they follow the amount of searching as closely as the amount of offending.
  • How many people there are. These are counts, not rates. The population of England and Wales grew by about 6% between the 2011 and 2021 censuses, so a count that holds steady over that time is a rate that is slowly falling.

For long-run trends in the offences it covers, the Office for National Statistics treats the Crime Survey for England and Wales as the better guide. Recorded crime comes into its own for what the survey cannot do: rare offences, single months and individual places. How the figures on this site work.

All recorded crime is the same figure every other page on this site uses: every street-level record the police publish, which includes anti-social behaviour.

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