Crime by postcode

How we work this out

We use data.police.uk's own monthly download, the police's open data, which police.uk last published on 30 September 2026. We count every crime and report of anti-social behaviour it places within one mile of the postcode's centre point, by the kinds police.uk uses: for the latest month and each of the 12 latest months. The download says which forces published each month, so where the local force has not published police.uk's latest months, we show its own latest 12 and say so, rather than count those months as quiet.

Police.uk says its locations "always represent the approximate location of a crime". Each crime is moved to the nearest of a fixed list of map points, each over a street centre, a public place or a commercial premises, chosen so that every point covers at least eight addresses or none.

We give counts, not a rate: we hold no count of the people who live, work or pass through a circle a mile across, so a figure per 1,000 people would be a guess. And we do not say whether an area is safe: the figures are there to read.

Why are the figures high for a town centre?

A circle a mile across around a town centre takes in its shops, pubs and station, where many crimes are recorded, and the counts are for the circle, not one street. Shoplifting is recorded where the shop is.

Does this cover Scotland?

No. Police Scotland publishes its own figures; police.uk covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we cover England and Wales of those.