Worst areas for possession of weapons

The 100 worst areas for possession of weapons

Ranked by recorded offences per 1,000 residents over the 12 months to July 2026, across 306 local authority areas: cities, towns and rural districts alike.

The table stops at 100, by which point the rate has fallen from 6.1 per 1,000 to 1.0. The other 206 areas carry the same figure for possession of weapons on their own pages: search for a place by name, or see all 306 areas ranked by overall crime.

The first rate divides recorded offences by resident population, which is what the Office for National Statistics publishes. The second divides the same offences by the Census 2021 working-day population, which counts the people who are actually there on a weekday rather than the ones who sleep there. In this top ten, City of London and Westminster each fall by more than a third once the same offences are divided by the working-day population instead of the resident one, which is the signature of a place that fills up by day and empties at night.

The last column is this category's share of all crime recorded in that same area. A high rate with an ordinary share is a busy place; a high rate with an unusually high share is a place with a particular problem, and the two are worth telling apart.

What counts as possession of weapons

The Home Office publishes this as a single category, Possession of weapons, covering carrying a weapon such as a firearm or a knife. Like drug offences it is largely found by officers searching, so it tracks enforcement closely.

Across England and Wales, police recorded 56,791 of them in the year to July 2026: 1.0% of all recorded crime, 8.1% up on the year before.

Is this the same as knife crime?

No, and the difference is large. This category counts people found carrying a weapon. It does not count weapons being used: an assault with a knife is recorded under violence and sexual offences, and a robbery at knifepoint under robbery, so neither appears here. Nor does the published data mark which offences involved a knife specifically, so no table on this site can separate knife crime from crime committed with any other weapon. For knife-enabled offences as a category, the Office for National Statistics publishes figures this open data cannot reproduce.

Areas are local authority districts, the level England and Wales actually publishes boundaries and populations for. A further 24 districts are left out because their police force has not filed a full year of returns; shown with a partial year, they would sit near the bottom of the table looking safe. How the figures work sets out the method, data sources lists where the numbers come from.

Where each offence peaks

City of London tops 9 of the 13 categories, and between them the 13 are led by only 4 different areas. That is what dividing by residents does: a place whose daytime crowds dwarf the people who live there wins almost everything, whatever the offence. Ordered by how much of all recorded crime each one accounts for, so the largest categories come first.

Rates are per 1,000 residents over the 12 months to July 2026, across the same 306 areas. For crime as a whole rather than one category, see highest crime rates and safest places to live.