Crime in Barnstaple

The safest and worst parts of Barnstaple

The safest part of Barnstaple is Roundswell & Landkey, with 47.6 recorded crimes per 1,000 residents, about 48% below the England and Wales average. At the other end, Barnstaple Central recorded 232.5 per 1,000, roughly 2.6 times the national rate.

Neighbourhoods inside Barnstaple, by recorded crimes per 1,000 residents in the year to June 2026, shaded against the England and Wales average. Names are the House of Commons Library's, which are chosen to be the ones local people use.

Neighbourhoods here are Middle Layer Super Output Areas of around 7,000 residents. Each figure is an average over the whole neighbourhood, and the ones holding a town centre run high wherever daily visitors outnumber residents. How the figures work explains why these areas are used rather than electoral wards.

By type of offence

Recorded offences in the 12 months to June 2026, with the change on the 12 months before.

Set against the national mix of offences, shoplifting stands out in Barnstaple: it makes up about 65% more of recorded crime here than it does nationally, with possession of weapons also over-represented. In the other direction, vehicle crime, theft from the person, and burglary all make up well under their national share.

Home Office recorded crime, data.police.uk. Rates use ONS mid-2024 population estimates (38,055 residents). Categories are the Home Office crime types as published; they are not comparable with court or conviction figures.

What happened to those crimes

Police recorded 3,333 offences other than anti-social behaviour in Barnstaple in the year to June 2026. By the time this data was published, about 21% had been closed with no suspect identified and 45% closed because a prosecution was not possible or not pursued. Around 14% had led to a charge, caution or other formal action, and 19% were still open.

The widest shortfall against the national picture is for violence and sexual offences: 8.3% of cases here ended in a charge or other formal action, against 10.8% across England and Wales.

Outcomes describe where each investigation stood when the data was published, so recent offences are naturally still open and the closed shares will edge up as cases conclude. Anti-social behaviour is left out entirely: police record no outcomes for it, and counting it would quietly flatter every percentage here. "Formal action" spans charges, summonses, cautions, penalty notices and community resolutions.

Outcomes by offence in Barnstaple

The share of cases ending in a charge, caution or other formal action, against the same figure for England and Wales. Offences with fewer than 30 recorded cases here are left out: a percentage of twelve cases moves several points on one decision.

"Charged or dealt with" counts every outcome that is a formal action: charged, summonsed, cautioned, penalty notice, community resolution. Anti-social behaviour is excluded from both columns because it carries no outcome by design. A low rate is not necessarily a failing of the force here: some offences are far harder to detect anywhere, which is why every row is shown against the national figure for the same offence rather than against the other rows.

Over time

Recorded crime in Barnstaple peaked at 4,239 offences in 2018; the latest 12 months, at 3,808, are about 10% below that peak. That works out at roughly 10 a day.

Download every month as CSV, including which months each force filed.

Streets and the crime map

The named streets with the most recorded offences in the year to June 2026, beside every mapped location in Barnstaple.

How safe does Barnstaple feel?

No aggregate yet: ratings are shown once at least five people have answered, because an average of two opinions is one household wearing a statistic.

Anonymous, one rating per person per area; rate again to change yours. The aggregate on this page refreshes within a day. Perception is not a crime figure and is never mixed into one, and it answers a question the recorded data cannot: how the place feels to the people reading this page.

Compared with nearby areas

Against the rest of the country

In the national table, where 1st is the highest recorded crime rate, Barnstaple was 319th of 713 in December 2010 and is 344th of 939 today. It has moved 25 places away from the top: recorded crime here has fallen relative to the rest of the country.

Time of year

Recorded crime here peaks in July, about 24% above its quietest month, January.

Crime in context

What deprivation would predict

Across every English district, deprivation explains much of the difference in recorded crime rates. On that relationship alone, Barnstaple's level of deprivation would predict a rate of about 102 per 1,000. It records 100.1, close to what the pattern would suggest.

How tightly packed it is

527 people per square kilometre, across 72 km². England and Wales averages about 400 people per square kilometre. Density is the usual explanation for a high position in the national crime table: a rate divides the crime of everyone who passes through by the number who sleep there.

What a home costs

The median home sold in Barnstaple in 2025 went for £285,000, across 762 sales, down 1.2% on 2024.

Officers to record it

Devon & Cornwall Police had 3,641 full-time equivalent officers as at 31 March 2026, 1.98 per 1,000 residents, below the England and Wales figure of 2.42. That is 25% above its low point of 2,914 in 2017. Recorded crime partly measures how much policing there is to record it, so a change in officer numbers moves the figures on this page even when nothing else does.

Officer numbers are full-time equivalents from the Home Office police workforce return, counted across the whole force area. Nothing in this section causes anything on this page: a correlation is not a cause.

Stop and search

Devon & Cornwall Police carried out 5,389 stop and searches in the 12 months to June 2026, 2.9 per 1,000 people in the force area. 29.5% ended in an arrest or another sanction, about the England and Wales rate of 28.3%. The rest found nothing.

Stop and search is recorded for the whole force area rather than by town, so it is set out in full on the Devon & Cornwall Police page.

Every force compared, and how searches break down by the ethnicity officers recorded, is on stop and search by ethnicity.

Who oversees policing in Barnstaple

Policing in Barnstaple is overseen by the police and crime commissioner for Devon & Cornwall Police. Alison Hernandez (Conservative) won that election in May 2024. Since that election, recorded crime here is up 15.3% (the latest 12 months of data against the 12 months up to the election).

Councils in England and Wales have no policing powers. The police force covering an area is answerable to a directly elected commissioner, or to the combined authority mayor where that office has taken the role on. The coloured strip under the trend chart shows these terms against the crime line.

The change column reports what recorded crime did across each term, because it is the first thing a reader wants from this table. It is what happened, not what the officeholder caused: recorded crime moves with reporting rules, how a force records what is reported, national policy and a pandemic, and those effects are far larger than anything one commissioner does in four years. The terms spanning 2020 and 2021 in particular contain the lockdowns, which cut recorded crime everywhere and handed the following term the rebound.

These are election results, not terms of office: commissioners resign, die and are disqualified mid-term, and by-elections between the scheduled polls are listed here only where one has been held. For who holds the office today, the force's own website is the authority. The last column compares recorded crime in the 12 months ending at the handover (or the latest data) with the 12 months ending at the election itself; where a monthly return is missing, the window slides by up to four months to the nearest complete one. A dash means the term ran under a year or no complete window exists near it.

Questions

Is Barnstaple safe?

In the year to June 2026, the recorded crime rate in Barnstaple was 100.1 per 1,000 residents. That is 10% higher than the England and Wales average. A recorded crime rate measures what the police recorded, across a whole town. It says nothing about any particular street, and areas with busy town centres, shopping areas or nightlife record more crime per resident because far more people are present than live there.

What are the worst areas of Barnstaple for crime?

Going by recorded crime rates in the year to June 2026, the highest are in Barnstaple Central (232.5 per 1,000), Barnstaple Sticklepath (112.5 per 1,000) and Barnstaple Pilton (82.8 per 1,000). The top of the list usually marks the town centre, where daily visitors outnumber residents many times over.

What are the safest areas of Barnstaple?

The lowest recorded crime rates in Barnstaple are in Roundswell & Landkey (47.6 per 1,000), Barnstaple South (71.5 per 1,000) and Barnstaple Pilton (82.8 per 1,000). Full figures for every neighbourhood are in the table above.

Is crime in Barnstaple going up or down?

In Barnstaple, the latest 12 months are 7.8% lower than the 12 before. Over the full series, recorded crime here peaked at 4,239 offences in 2018 and the current total is about 10% below it.

What is the most common crime in Barnstaple?

The most commonly recorded offence in Barnstaple is violence and sexual offences, with 1,557 offences in the 12 months to June 2026 (41% of all recorded crime). The next most common is shoplifting, with 532.

Where does this come from?

Police recorded crime open data, published at data.police.uk by the Home Office under the Open Government Licence. It covers offences the police recorded, which is not the same as offences committed: crimes that are never reported never appear. Rates use ONS mid-2024 population estimates. How the figures work sets out the calculation, the reporting lag and every known gap.