Crime rates in Cathays

The safest and worst parts of Cathays

Neighbourhoods inside Cathays, by recorded crimes per 1,000 residents in the year to July 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 July 2026, with the change on the 12 months before.

Set against the national mix of offences, bicycle theft stands out in Cathays: it accounts for roughly 5 times the share of recorded crime it does nationally, with shoplifting and robbery also over-represented. In the other direction, other crime, burglary, and anti-social behaviour all make up well under their national share.

Home Office recorded crime, data.police.uk. Rates use ONS mid-2024 population estimates (23,927 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 6,330 offences other than anti-social behaviour in Cathays in the year to July 2026. By the time this data was published, about 44% had been closed with no suspect identified and 22% closed because a prosecution was not possible or not pursued. Around 17% had led to a charge, caution or other formal action, and 16% were still open.

The widest shortfall against the national picture is for drugs: 43.8% of cases here ended in a charge or other formal action, against 55.8% 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 Cathays

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 Cathays peaked at 10,045 offences in 2011; the latest 12 months, at 7,055, are about 30% below that peak. That works out at roughly 19 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 July 2026, beside every mapped location in Cathays.

Compared with nearby areas

Against the rest of the country

In the national table, where 1st is the highest recorded crime rate, Cathays was 3rd of 706 in December 2010 and is 3rd of 929 today.

Time of year

Recorded crime here peaks in October, about 23% above its quietest month, April.

Crime in context

How tightly packed it is

7,211 people per square kilometre, across 3 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.

Officers to record it

South Wales Police had 3,534 full-time equivalent officers as at 31 March 2026, 2.59 per 1,000 residents, above the England and Wales figure of 2.42. That is 24% above its low point of 2,861 in 2014. 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

South Wales Police carried out 4,882 stop and searches in the 12 months to July 2026, 3.6 per 1,000 people in the force area. 24.6% ended in an arrest or another sanction, against 28.9% across England and Wales. 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 South Wales 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 Cathays

Policing in Cathays is overseen by the police and crime commissioner for South Wales Police. Emma Wools (Labour Co-op) won that election in May 2024. Since that election, recorded crime here is down 11.1% (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 Cathays safe?

In the year to July 2026, the recorded crime rate in Cathays was 294.9 per 1,000 residents. That is 224% 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.

Is crime in Cathays going up or down?

In Cathays, the latest 12 months are 3.0% lower than the 12 before. Over the full series, recorded crime here peaked at 10,045 offences in 2011 and the current total is about 30% below it.

What is the most common crime in Cathays?

The most commonly recorded offence in Cathays is violence and sexual offences, with 2,206 offences in the 12 months to July 2026 (31% of all recorded crime). The next most common is shoplifting, with 1,335.

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.