With approximately 122.1 crimes per 1,000 population, Cleveland, in North East England, had the highest crime rate of all the police force areas in England and Wales in 2024/25. High crime rates are evident in other areas of northern England, such as West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester at 114.5 and 108.2, respectively. In the UK capital, London, the crime rate was 105.5 per 1,000 people. The lowest crime rate in England was in the relatively rural areas of Wiltshire in South West England, as well as North Yorkshire. Overall crime in England and Wales The number of crimes in England and Wales reached approximately 6.74 million in 2022/23, falling slightly to 6.66 million in 2023/24, and 6.59 million in 2024/25. Overall crime has been rising steadily across England and Wales for almost a decade, even when adjusted for population rises. In 2022/23, for example, the crime rate in England and Wales was 93.6, the highest since 2006/07. When compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, England and Wales is something of an outlier, as crime rates for Scotland and Northern Ireland have not followed the same trajectory of rising crime. Additionally, there has been a sharp increase in violent crimes and sexual offences since the mid-2010s in England and Wales. While theft offences have generally been falling, the number of shoplifting offences reached a peak of 530,640 in 2024/25. Troubled justice system under pressure Alongside rising crime figures, many indicators also signal that the justice system is getting pushed to breaking point. The percentage of crimes that are solved in England and Wales was just 5.7 percent in 2023, with sexual offences having a clearance rate of just 3.6 percent. Crimes are also taking far longer than usual to pass through the justice system. In 2022, it took an average of 407 days for a crown court case to reach a conclusion from the time of the offence, compared with 233 days in 2018. This is most likely related to the large backlog of cases in crown courts, which reached over 67,750 in 2023. Furthermore, prisons in England and Wales are dangerously overcrowded, with the government even releasing some prisoners early to address the issue.

London had the highest crime rate among regions of the United Kingdom in 2024/25, at approximately ***** crimes per 1,000 population, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber, at ***** crimes per 1,000 people. On a more local level, the police force area with the highest crime rate in England and Wales was that of Cleveland, in North East England. Although London had the fifth-highest crime rate among police force areas, it was lower than the crime rates of the West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and South Yorkshire police force areas as well. Is crime in the UK rising? Between the early 2000s and the mid-2010s, crime in the UK declined quite significantly. The crime rates of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland all fell during this time period. From around 2013/14, however the crime rate in England and Wales began to rise again, approaching levels seen in the 2000s. In Scotland and Northern Ireland crime also stopped declining at the same rate, although there was no sudden increase as seen in England and Wales. Without adjusting for population-size, the overall number of crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales reached a peak of around 6.74 million offences in 2022/23, falling slightly in the two years since then. What kinds of crime are increasing? Although overall crime levels have increased, some types of crime have continued to decline. Overall theft offences for example, are far lower than in the 2000s. This is partly due to the decline in burglaries, and vehicle theft offences. Shoplifting offences, by contrast have spiked since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a peak of over ******* offences in 2024/25. Additionally, the number of violence against the person offences surged from 2014/15 onwards, with the number of sexual offences also at far higher levels than in the recent past.

There were 951,803 crimes recorded in London in the 2024/25 reporting year, compared with 938,020 in the previous year. During this time period, crime in London increased steadily, with the figure of 912,487 in 2019/20 a pre-pandemic peak when there were approximately 102.4 crimes per 1,000 people taking place in the UK capital, compared with 106.4 crimes per 1,000 people in the most recent year. What types of crime are rising? Compared with crime levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, some types of crime have yet to reach the same levels they were at in the 2019/20 reporting year. The number of criminal offences related to theft and drugs, are slightly down in 2023/24 when compared with pre-pandemic trends. On the other hand, the number of violent crimes reached a peak of 252,545 offences in 2023/24, while the number of sexual offences in London since 2021/22 has been far higher than in previous years. London compared to the rest of UK While the UK capital receives extensive coverage for its crime problems, the increase in crime there is part of a wider trend afflicting the rest of the country. The overall crime rate for England and Wales in 2023/24 was 89.7 crimes per 1,000 people, slightly lower than in 2022/23, when the crime rate was the highest since 2006/07. Additionally the Metropolitan Police, the police service responsible for policing Greater London had the sixth-highest crime rate among police force areas with Cleveland police force in North East England having the highest.

Recorded crime figures for CSP areas. Number of offences for the last two years, percentage change, and rates per 1,000 population for the latest year.

London Street-Level Crime Data (2024)

This dataset provides street-level crime data reported by the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police from January to December 2024, sourced from the UK Government's open data portal data.police.uk.

It includes detailed records of crimes by type, location, police force, and outcome category, covering the entire London region.

📁 Features (9 Columns)

• Crime ID: Unique identifier for the crime report
• Month: Reporting month in YYYY-MM format
• Reported by: Police force (Metropolitan / City of London)
• Crime type: Category of crime (e.g., drugs, burglary)
• Last outcome category: Case outcome (e.g., investigation complete)
• LSOA name: Lower Super Output Area (small local area)
• Location: Approximate street or landmark
• Latitude, Longitude: Coordinates for mapping

🧠 Suggested Use Cases

• Create interactive crime heatmaps of London
• Analyse trends in crime types over time
• Compare borough-level crime levels
• Build predictive models to forecast crime volume
• Cluster high-crime zones using spatial ML

📌 Source

Original source: https://data.police.uk/data/

📄 License

This dataset is shared under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Attribution: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Compiled and cleaned by @rahulladhani to support open ML exploration and public safety insights 🔍

Part of Release: Official Sub-Ward, Ward and Borough level crime counts. Choose from the three data sets (‘Sub-Ward data’, ‘Ward data’ or ‘Borough data’) according to your requirements. This page contains the borough level data files Click here for corresponding LSOA level data: Recorded Crime Summary Data for London: LSOA Level Click here for corresponding ward level data: Recorded Crime Summary Data for London: Ward Level ‘Borough data’ counts the number of crimes in each Local Authority area of London per month, according to crime type. Use this data if you need to analyse crime data according to the location of geographic boroughs. The categories of crime counts within them may change from time to time. Below is a list of the crime types you can currently extract (only at borough or ward level): Minor Category: Major Category Murder: ViolenceAgainstThePerson CommonAssault: ViolenceAgainstThePerson OffensiveWeapon: ViolenceAgainstThePerson Harassment: ViolenceAgainstThePerson Otherviolence: ViolenceAgainstThePerson AssaultWithInjury: ViolenceAgainstThePerson WoundingGBH: ViolenceAgainstThePerson Rape: SexualOffences OtherSexual: SexualOffences PersonalProperty: Robbery BusinessProperty: Robbery BurglaryInADwelling: Burglary BurglaryInOtherBuildings: Burglary TheftOrTakingOfMotor: TheftAndHandling TheftFromMotor: TheftAndHandling MotorInterferenceAndTampering: TheftAndHandling TheftFromShops: TheftAndHandling TheftOrTakingOfPedalCycles: TheftAndHandling OtherTheftPerson: TheftAndHandling OtherTheft: TheftAndHandling HandlingStolenGoods: TheftAndHandling CountedPerVictim: FraudOrForgery OtherFraudAndForgery: FraudOrForgery CriminalDamageToADwelling: CriminalDamage CriminalDamageToOtherBldg: CriminalDamage CriminalDamageToMotor: CriminalDamage OtherCriminalDamage: CriminalDamage DrugTrafficking: Drugs PossessionOfDrugs: Drugs OtherDrugOffences: Drugs GoingEquipped: OtherNotifiableOffences OtherNotifiable: OtherNotifiableOffences Each row of data in the data sets contains: The number of incidents according to the Month Recorded, the specific crime type, and the Location The Month Recorded The broad crime type (Major HO category – eg Robbery) The specific crime type (Minor HO category – eg Robbery: Personal Property) The Location (Sub –Ward, Ward or borough depending on the data set selected)

There were 104 homicides recorded by the police in London in the 2024/25 reporting year, compared with 116 in 2023/24. Prior to the most recent year, 2017/18 had the most homicides in London at 159, with the fewest occurring in 2016/17, when there were 107. Comparisons with the rest of the UK With a homicide rate of 11.6 per million people, London had the highest homicide rate among UK regions in 2024/25. On a more localized level, the Metropolitan Police of Greater London reported a lower homicide rate than other police force areas that cover major cities, such as Merseyside, while the highest homicide rate among UK police forces was in Lincolnshire, in the East Midlands. Across England and Wales as a whole, there were 535 homicides in 2024/25, compared with 567 in the previous year. Knives the most common weapon used In 2023/24 there were 262 homicides in England and Wales involving a knife or other sharp instrument. As a comparison, there were just 22 homicides caused by a firearm in the same reporting year. While guns are generally difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom, knives are far more prevalent and have become a major problem for the police, particularly in London. The number of knife crime offences in London rose from 9,752 in 2015/16 to 16,344 in 2024/25.

In the 2024/25 reporting year, West Yorkshire Police reported a crime rate of 114.5 crimes per 1,000 population, the highest crime rate among the provided police force areas whose territories include large cities. Greater Manchester Police reported a crime rate of 108.2 crimes per 1,000 population and had the second-highest crime rate during this year.

Police recorded crime figures by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership areas (which equate in the majority of instances, to local authorities).

Numbers of recorded offences, and rates of offences per thousand population, by broad crime grouping, by financial year and borough.

Rate is given as per thousand population, and are calculated using mid-year population from the first part of the financial year eg For Financial year 2008-09, mid-year estimates for 2008 are used.

Offences: These are confirmed reports of crimes being committed. All data relates to "notifiable offences" - which are designated categories of crimes that all police forces in England and Wales are required to report to the Home Office
Crime rates are not available for Heathrow due to no population figures

Monthly crime data by borough and ward is available from the Met Police website, available around one month after month end.

The total number of recorded crimes per month is also shown. A fuller breakdown by 32 different types of crime is available on the MPS website.

There were changes to the police recorded crime classifications from April 2012. Therefore caution should be used when comparing sub-groups of crime figures from 2012/13 with earlier years.

Action Fraud have taken over the recording of fraud offences on behalf of individual police forces. This process began in April 2011 and was rolled out to all police forces by March 2013. Due to this change caution should be applied when comparing data over this transitional period and with earlier years.

Link to data on Met Police website.

Crime stats on ONS website

Context

London is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London

Content

This data counts the number of crimes at two different geographic levels of London (LSOA and borough) by year, according to crime type. Includes data from 2008 to present. Crime categories are included in the BigQuery table description.

Fork this kernel to get started with this dataset.

Acknowledgements

https://data.london.gov.uk/

https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/dataset/bigquery-public-data:london_crime?_ga=2.189454959.-577194880.1523455401

https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/greater-london-authority/london-crime?filter=category:public-safety

This dataset is publicly available for anyone to use under the following terms provided by the Dataset Source — http://www.data.gov/privacy-policy#data_policy — and is provided "AS IS" without any warranty, express or implied, from Google. Google disclaims all liability for any damages, direct or indirect, resulting from the use of the dataset.

Banner Photo by Luca Micheli from Unplash.

Inspiration

What is the change in the number of crime incidents from 2011 to 2016?

What were the top 3 crimes per borough in 2016?

A sum of crime records by London Borough for 24 months to July 2021.

Taken from my dataset here.

Used in creating a heatmap in this notebook.

(The content is released under the UK Open Government License (OGL) 2.0 details of which can be found here).

Total Notifiable Offence (TNO) data follows the Home Office counting rules for recorded crime (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counting-rules-for-recorded-crime ). NB This data-set includes “Other Accepted Crime”, which are non-notifiable crimes and must be excluded when calculating a TNO total.

Source: Metropolitan Police Service via London Datastore Original data: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/mps-monthly-crime-dahboard-data/ License: UK Open Government Licence v3.0 (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)

Crime Rates of offences per thousand population, by broad crime grouping, by financial year for wards. Offences: These are confirmed reports of crimes being committed. All data relates to "notifiable offences" - which are designated categories of crimes that all police forces in England and Wales are required to report to the Home Office. Ward data should not be aggregated to give a borough or London total. This is because a small percentage (less than 5%) of crimes in this dataset have not been geocoded to a ward. Therefore total numbers and rates are indicative only, and are not an exact measure at ward level. The rate is calculated using ward GLA 2012-based (SHLAA) population projections, and population data calculated and constrained to 2012 Borough (SHLAA) projections. The London figure only includes the Met Police area, not the City of London. The London total includes all offences in the Met Police Area including those that could not be geocoded. Therefore the London total will not equal the sum of the wards. Some ward boundaries changed in 2014. From 2013/14 the data shown is for the new boundaries. This only affects Hackney, Kensington and Chelsea, and Tower Hamlets. From 2013/14, the numbers and rates for 2013 ward boundaries in Hackney, K&C and Tower Hamlets, have all been modelled based on the proportion of population living in each area at the 2011 Census. Action Fraud have taken over the recording of fraud offences on behalf of individual police forces. This process began in April 2011 and was rolled out to all police forces by March 2013. Due to this change caution should be applied when comparing data over this transitional period and with earlier years. Data by detailed crime group and month are available from the MPS website .

This data counts the number of crimes at three different geographic levels of London (borough, ward, LSOA) per month, according to crime type.

Data is available in two files for each level of geography - the most up to date data covering the last available 24 months only and one covering all historic full calendar years.

In March 2019, the Metropolitan Police Service started to provide offences grouped by the updated Home Office crime classifications . This currently only covers the most recent 24 months of data, but historic data using the previous categories is available separately back to January 2008.

Below is a list of the crime types covered under the new HO categories (*not available at LSOA level):

Major Category: Minor Category

Arson and Criminal Damage - Arson / Criminal Damage

Burglary: Burglary - Business and Community / Burglary - Residential*

Drug Offences: Drug Trafficking / Possession of Drugs

Miscellaneous Crimes Against Society: Absconding from Lawful Custody / Bail Offences / Bigamy / Concealing an Infant Death Close to Birth / Dangerous Driving / Disclosure, Obstruction, False or Misleading State / Exploitation of Prostitution / Forgery or Use of Drug Prescription / Fraud or Forgery Associated with Driver Records / Going Equipped for Stealing / Handling Stolen Goods / Making, Supplying or Possessing Articles for use i / Obscene Publications / Offender Management Act / Other Forgery / Other Notifiable Offences / Perjury / Perverting Course of Justice / Possession of False Documents / Profitting From or Concealing Proceeds of Crime / Soliciting for Prostitution / Threat or Possession With Intent to Commit Crimina / Wildlife Crime

Possession of Weapons: Other Firearm Offences / Possession of Firearm with Intent / Possession of Firearms Offences / Possession of Other Weapon / Possession of Article with Blade or Point

Public Order Offences: Other Offences Against the State, or Public Order / Public Fear Alarm or Distress / Racially or Religiously Aggravated Public Fear / Violent Disorder

Robbery: Robbery of Business Property / Robbery of Personal Property

Sexual Offences*: Rape, Other Sexual Offences

Theft: Bicycle Theft / Other Theft / Shoplifting / Theft from Person

Vehicle Offences: Aggravated Vehicle Taking / Interfering with a Motor Vehicle / Theft from a Motor Vehicle / Theft or Taking of a Motor Vehicle

Violence Against the Person: Homicide / Violence with Injury / Violence without Injury

To note:

Fraud data was transferred from individual police forces to National Action Fraud in March 2013

*Prior to April 2017, police recorded burglary offence categories were split such that dwellings (domestic burglary) and buildings other than dwellings (non-domestic burglary) were separately identifiable, where:

• domestic burglary covers residential premises, including attached buildings such as garages
• non-domestic burglary covers non-residential premises, including businesses and public buildings, as well as non-attached buildings within the grounds of a dwelling, such as sheds and detached garages

From April 2017 onwards a new classification of police recorded burglary was introduced, dividing offences into two categories of “residential” and “business and community”.

“Residential” burglary includes all buildings or parts of buildings that are within the boundary of, or form a part of, a dwelling and includes the dwelling itself, vacant dwellings, sheds, garages, outhouses, summer houses and any other structure that meets the definition of a building. It also includes other premises used for residential purposes such as houseboats, residential care homes and hostels.

“Business and community” burglary includes all buildings or parts of buildings that are used solely and exclusively for business purposes or are otherwise entirely outside the classification of residential burglary.

**As per data protection laws, Sexual Offences are not provided at the LSOA level.

NB Data uploaded to this area after February 2024 is sourced from the CONNECT system. Some measures\details previously provided may not be available in total or in part. Please take care when comparing data-sets posted after February 2024 with those posted prior.

Please note that there is a level of detail that cannot be translated between legacy system a

There were approximately 6.59 million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2024/25, compared with approximately 6.66 million in the previous reporting year. Although there was a slight decline on the previous two reporting years, 2024/25 saw the third-highest number of crimes recorded in the provided time period, with the dip in crime figures reported in 2020/21 due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place throughout that reporting year. In general, the number of crime offenses in England and Wales increased at a fairly rapid pace from 2014 onward, rising from just over four million to a peak of 6.74 million offences in 2022/23. Reversing the trend after a decade of cuts The uptick in crime since the mid-2010s has led to serious questions about how to further reverse this trend and if the police have enough manpower and resources to counter it. Due to austerity measures pursued by the 2010 coalition government, police forces had to contend with fewer resources, leading to cuts in personnel. Between 2010 and 2017, officer numbers across the UK were reduced by 22,000 In more recent years, public sector expenditure on the police force has started to increase and reached 27.3 billion British pounds in 2023/24. As of 2024, there were around 170,500 police officers in the UK, 1,500 fewer than in 2010. Crime rates are highest in Northern England In 2024/25, the police force area with the highest crime rate in this year was Cleveland, located in the North East of England, which had approximately 122 crimes per 1,000 people, compared with the England and Wales average of 87.2. After Cleveland, the highest crime rates were reported by forces that are responsible for policing major UK cities, such as West Yorkshire Police, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, and the Metropolitan Police in London. The areas with the lowest crime rates are typically more rural in nature, such as Wiltshire, which had the lowest crime rate in this reporting year.

In 2024/25, London had the highest homicide rate of any region of the United Kingdom, at **** homicides per million people, followed by the East Midlands at **** homicides per million people. Scotland had a homicide rate of **** homicides per million people in the 2023/24 reporting year. On a more local level, and when just looking at England and Wales, London's homicide rate was however below that of four other police force areas during this time period. Are homicides declining in the UK? When compared with the early 2000s, there are far fewer homicides across the UK. In England and Wales, the number of homicides has fallen from ***** in 2002/03, to *** in 2024/25. In Scotland, homicides fell from *** to ** in the same time period, while in Northern Ireland, there were ** homicides in 2023/24, compared with ** in 2002/23. This decline was not consistent, however, with a noticeable uptick in homicides towards the end of the 2010s, particulary in England and Wales. As whole though, homicide rates across all three legal jurisdictions in the UK are far lower than twenty years earlier. Types of crimes rising in 2025 Although homicides have fallen to relatively low levels in 2024/25, overall crime remains quite high. Types of crime that have increased substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic in particular include shoplifting which reached a peak of ******* offences in England and Wales in 2024/25. Although overall thefts have fallen, theft from the person offences (such as pickpocketing or snatching of property) reached a high of ******* offences in the same reporting year. Sexual offences also peaked in 2024/25, reaching ******* offences, compared with ****** in 2012/13.