What London crime data can tell you about an area
Understand London recorded-crime bands, resident-normalised rates and their limits. Compare real public reference points without inventing safety grades.
By the notbad project · editorial review . Source dates are separate.
Explore recorded crimeIn this guide
A recorded-crime comparison can highlight questions worth investigating before choosing a home. It cannot tell you whether a particular person will be safe, what an individual street feels like at night, or whether everyone in a neighbourhood has the same experience. notbad shows historical area evidence with those limits visible.
Understand the comparison before reading the band
The saved comparison uses Metropolitan Police and City of London Police records from September 2024 to August 2026. Twenty-four months are annualised and divided by ONS mid-2024 resident populations, then expressed as published crimes per 1,000 residents per year. Five app-derived bands compare London LSOA 2021 areas with each other. Band 1 has the lowest recorded rate in this comparison; band 5 has the highest.
These bands are not official safety grades. They do not compare London with the rest of the country, combine crime with deprivation, or predict an individual's risk. A postcode report identifies the source area containing the selected point, so the result is still about that area rather than the property alone.
Why a busy centre can look different from a residential area
Resident population is the denominator. A place used by commuters, shoppers and visitors can have many reports relative to the number of people who live there. The City of London examples below all fall in band 5; that fact describes the retained comparison, not the experience of every resident or visitor.
The Camden examples illustrate another limit of a borough-wide label: the reference positions at Chalk Farm station and Primrose Hill fall in different source-area bands. Inspect the actual source-area name and rate, rather than applying one label to an entire borough. The linked borough pages contain the full three-point comparison and the exact public reference coordinates.
Know what was excluded
Anti-social behaviour, records without a usable location and the incomplete British Transport Police series are excluded. Published incident positions are subject to the source's location policy. The source is not a complete account of every event, and the saved period does not establish today's conditions.
A missing source polygon or unusable coverage is unknown. It does not earn a passing result when crime is an enabled Explore condition. Changing other map settings does not change the crime evidence at a selected point.
Turn a result into a useful question
Check the source-area code, the covered period and the annualised rate before comparing two results. If two points lie in the same source area, they can have the same crime reading despite different nearby roads or destinations. If they lie on different sides of a boundary, a band change should prompt examination of the underlying areas rather than a claim about a sudden change in personal risk.
Visit the routes and surroundings that matter to your routine. Consider current local information separately from this historical comparison. Use the postcode checking guide to distinguish the representative postcode point from the home itself, and the methodology for the calculation and limitations.
Sources
Compare retained public examples
Each row uses the first numbered public reference from its area guide and the same all-criterion report profile. These are examples, not a representative sample of homes. Daytime road values are outdoor averages; absent values remain unknown. Read the method and source dates.
| Reference | Road daytime | Supported station walk | Crime source band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank Underground Station City of London | 69.66 dB | ≈ 2 min Bank Underground Station | 5 / 5 — historical area comparison |
| Chalk Farm Underground Station Camden | 77.58 dB | ≈ 1 min Chalk Farm Underground Station | 5 / 5 — historical area comparison |
| St. Nicholas Centre Sutton | 61.36 dB | Unknown — no reliable route estimate | 5 / 5 — historical area comparison |