OpenCrime

Worst areas for public order offences

City of London in Greater London has the highest recorded rate of public order offences of the 306 local authority areas in England and Wales with a full year of data: 41.6 per 1,000 residents in the year to July 2026, against 6.3 nationally. It has 15,111 residents and 92,154 people in it on a working day, so that rate divides a city centre's crime by a village's population. Measured against the people actually there on a weekday, Blaenau Gwent comes top instead. On the resident measure, Westminster, Blaenau Gwent and Middlesbrough come next. The 100 highest are listed below.

41.6 public order offences per 1,000 residents in City of London, the highest of 306 areas
6.3 per 1,000 across England and Wales
-3.1% national change on the previous 12 months
6.9% of all recorded crime is public order offences

This ranks recorded crime, not danger. A high position means the police recorded more public order offences per resident, which is not the same as a place being more dangerous to be in. Somewhere people report readily looks worse than somewhere people do not, and a district that fills with visitors carries their crime against the few who live there.

The 100 worst areas for public order offences

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.

# Area County Per 1,000 Per 1,000 workday Offences Year on year Share of its crime
1 City of London Greater London 41.6 6.8 629 -17.2% 6.4%
2 Westminster Greater London 18.5 10.5 3,875 +9.6% 4.4%
3 Blaenau Gwent Gwent 15.6 17.6 1,061 -0.4% 10.7%
4 Middlesbrough North Yorkshire 14.4 15.1 2,242 +10.9% 7.7%
5 Newport Gwent 13.8 14.4 2,318 -1.2% 10.2%
6 Bristol Bristol 13.3 13.5 6,581 -4.5% 9.0%
7 Kingston upon Hull East Riding of Yorkshire 13.2 13.6 3,626 +4.4% 9.6%
8 Torfaen Gwent 12.7 13.0 1,194 -0.3% 10.1%
9 Leicester Leicestershire 12.7 13.2 4,923 -2.7% 10.4%
10 Liverpool Merseyside 12.6 12.7 6,426 -7.3% 9.3%
11 Derby Derbyshire 12.3 12.6 3,373 -4.1% 9.2%
12 Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire 11.9 12.2 3,209 +8.9% 8.5%
13 Cardiff South Glamorgan 11.8 11.9 4,532 +5.1% 10.8%
14 Merthyr Tydfil Mid Glamorgan 11.6 11.6 681 +4.1% 10.7%
15 Camden Greater London 11.3 8.5 2,455 -1.3% 5.2%
16 Lincoln Lincolnshire 11.2 10.9 1,173 -6.5% 7.1%
17 Hartlepool County Durham 11.0 12.3 1,083 +7.0% 6.8%
18 Barrow-in-Furness Cumbria 10.9 10.9 742 +15.2% 10.7%
19 Blackpool Lancashire 10.9 11.0 1,566 +8.5% 5.8%
20 Carlisle Cumbria 10.9 11.3 1,248 +6.6% 11.2%
21 Brighton and Hove East Sussex 10.8 10.9 3,072 -3.5% 8.8%
22 Hastings East Sussex 10.8 11.1 986 +13.1% 7.6%
23 North East Lincolnshire Lincolnshire 10.7 11.0 1,714 -7.8% 7.8%
24 Chesterfield Derbyshire 10.7 10.5 1,129 -8.1% 8.8%
25 Caerphilly Gwent 10.6 11.3 1,877 -10.2% 10.0%
26 Crawley West Sussex 10.6 10.7 1,312 -7.5% 8.2%
27 Rhondda Cynon Taf Mid Glamorgan 10.5 11.3 2,540 +1.9% 12.3%
28 Southampton Hampshire 10.4 11.1 2,698 -7.0% 7.9%
29 Islington Greater London 10.4 9.9 2,317 +6.1% 5.7%
30 Nottingham Nottinghamshire 10.3 9.8 3,394 -5.3% 6.6%
31 Bridgend Mid Glamorgan 10.2 10.5 1,507 +9.1% 12.2%
32 Neath Port Talbot West Glamorgan 10.2 10.4 1,462 +8.9% 12.6%
33 Eastbourne East Sussex 10.1 10.3 1,055 +6.5% 7.3%
34 Halton Cheshire 10.0 10.4 1,318 -1.3% 11.0%
35 Calderdale West Yorkshire 9.9 10.2 2,089 -13.2% 8.5%
36 Portsmouth Hampshire 9.9 9.9 2,116 -13.9% 7.9%
37 Bradford West Yorkshire 9.8 10.2 5,546 -14.1% 7.6%
38 Swansea West Glamorgan 9.8 10.1 2,451 -1.2% 11.4%
39 Leeds West Yorkshire 9.4 9.5 7,949 -13.6% 7.5%
40 Redcar and Cleveland North Yorkshire 9.3 10.2 1,298 +7.7% 6.8%
41 Wakefield West Yorkshire 9.2 9.5 3,387 -15.9% 7.9%
42 Sedgemoor Somerset 9.0 9.7 1,178 -13.1% 8.2%
43 Oxford Oxfordshire 9.0 8.3 1,494 +4.3% 8.4%
44 Kensington and Chelsea Greater London 8.9 6.9 1,282 +0.1% 5.0%
45 Hammersmith and Fulham Greater London 8.7 8.2 1,641 -1.7% 6.3%
46 Monmouthshire Gwent 8.7 8.9 824 +13.2% 10.9%
47 St. Helens Merseyside 8.7 9.5 1,636 -9.1% 9.1%
48 Stockton-on-Tees County Durham 8.6 9.0 1,784 +8.7% 6.1%
49 Somerset West and Taunton Somerset 8.6 8.6 1,404 -8.6% 9.2%
50 Worthing West Sussex 8.6 8.9 980 +11.0% 8.6%
51 Reading Berkshire 8.6 9.0 1,571 +12.5% 7.7%
52 Spelthorne Surrey 8.6 9.5 917 -0.9% 9.9%
53 Cheshire West and Chester Cheshire 8.5 8.8 3,161 +1.3% 11.7%
54 Doncaster South Yorkshire 8.5 8.9 2,719 -10.2% 6.4%
55 Kirklees West Yorkshire 8.5 9.1 3,793 -10.4% 8.6%
56 Knowsley Merseyside 8.5 8.9 1,375 -7.9% 9.1%
57 Vale of Glamorgan South Glamorgan 8.5 8.9 1,148 +9.1% 11.7%
58 Newcastle upon Tyne Tyne and Wear 8.4 8.4 2,700 -22.0% 7.0%
59 Norwich Norfolk 8.4 8.2 1,238 -7.3% 6.7%
60 Slough Berkshire 8.4 8.9 1,404 +14.1% 8.1%
61 Hackney Greater London 8.4 8.7 2,233 +6.1% 5.7%
62 Sheffield South Yorkshire 8.3 8.5 4,850 -4.5% 7.4%
63 Sefton Merseyside 8.3 9.0 2,383 -3.9% 9.8%
64 Bolsover Derbyshire 8.3 8.9 695 +14.1% 9.7%
65 Burnley Lancashire 8.3 8.6 820 +44.9% 5.8%
66 North Lincolnshire Lincolnshire 8.3 8.2 1,413 +3.1% 8.7%
67 Warrington Cheshire 8.3 7.9 1,776 +15.7% 10.9%
68 Erewash Derbyshire 8.2 9.0 941 -1.0% 9.1%
69 Tower Hamlets Greater London 8.2 8.1 2,735 +7.4% 5.7%
70 Harlow Essex 8.2 8.9 807 -7.5% 7.6%
71 Stevenage Hertfordshire 8.1 8.2 743 +11.7% 6.9%
72 Bath and North East Somerset Somerset 7.9 8.0 1,582 +1.2% 8.9%
73 Denbighshire Clwyd 7.9 8.0 777 +11.8% 7.0%
74 Darlington County Durham 7.8 8.0 882 +5.5% 6.3%
75 Runnymede Surrey 7.8 8.0 722 -1.4% 9.2%
76 Guildford Surrey 7.8 7.8 1,185 -8.6% 9.6%
77 North Somerset Somerset 7.8 8.3 1,752 -11.5% 9.0%
78 Conwy Clwyd 7.8 8.0 890 +5.2% 7.2%
79 Rotherham South Yorkshire 7.7 8.3 2,141 -6.0% 7.0%
80 Barnsley South Yorkshire 7.7 8.4 1,947 -14.0% 7.2%
81 Great Yarmouth Norfolk 7.7 8.0 772 +1.1% 6.9%
82 Wirral Merseyside 7.7 8.3 2,527 -7.5% 9.6%
83 Pembrokeshire Dyfed 7.6 7.8 958 -6.9% 8.5%
84 Birmingham West Midlands 7.6 7.7 9,005 +8.9% 6.1%
85 Peterborough Cambridgeshire 7.5 7.6 1,681 -3.2% 6.0%
86 Newcastle-under-Lyme Staffordshire 7.5 8.2 958 +25.4% 8.5%
87 Isle of Wight Isle of Wight 7.5 7.6 1,060 -5.4% 9.0%
88 Amber Valley Derbyshire 7.5 8.0 974 -3.4% 9.2%
89 Lewisham Greater London 7.5 8.2 2,250 +0.8% 6.1%
90 Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire 7.5 7.7 2,285 +4.2% 7.4%
91 Preston Lancashire 7.5 7.7 1,215 +5.9% 5.8%
92 Lambeth Greater London 7.4 7.3 2,353 +1.0% 4.9%
93 County Durham County Durham 7.4 7.9 3,983 +6.4% 6.2%
94 Cheshire East Cheshire 7.4 7.7 3,110 +9.3% 11.0%
95 Mendip Somerset 7.3 7.5 862 -3.2% 9.2%
96 Worcester Worcestershire 7.2 7.3 765 -16.8% 6.4%
97 Allerdale Cumbria 7.2 7.6 699 -2.8% 9.9%
98 Copeland Cumbria 7.1 7.0 483 -16.0% 10.3%
99 Exeter Devon 7.1 6.6 981 +1.7% 6.5%
100 Cannock Chase Staffordshire 7.1 7.6 737 +5.9% 8.3%

The table stops at 100, by which point the rate has fallen from 41.6 per 1,000 to 7.1. The other 206 areas carry the same figure for public order offences 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 public order offences

The Home Office publishes this as a single category, Public order, covering offences that cause fear, alarm or distress. Like anti-social behaviour it depends heavily on whether anyone reports it.

Across England and Wales, police recorded 388,618 of them in the year to July 2026: 6.9% of all recorded crime, 3.1% down on the year before.

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.

Offence Led by Rate there England and Wales Share of all crime
Violence City of London 99.3 32.4 35.5%
Anti-social behaviour Westminster 64.2 14.5 15.9%
Shoplifting City of London 108.1 7.8 8.6%
Criminal damage City of London 19.8 6.4 7.0%
Public order (this page) City of London 41.6 6.3 6.9%
Other theft City of London 158.5 6.1 6.6%
Vehicle crime Kensington and Chelsea 14.4 4.7 5.1%
Burglary City of London 31.4 3.3 3.7%
Drug offences City of London 30.5 3.1 3.4%
Theft from the person Westminster 85.0 1.6 1.8%
Robbery City of London 20.2 1.3 1.4%
Weapons Crawley 6.1 0.9 1.0%
Bicycle theft City of London 24.1 0.8 0.9%

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.