The crime rate in London was 106.4 crime offences per thousand people for the 2024/25 reporting year, compared with 105.8 in the previous year. Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, the crime rate in the UK capital increased in every reporting year. The sudden drop in 2019/20 was due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing a sharp reduction in certain types of crime, such as robbery and theft. Crime patterns in the capital Overall there were 951,803 crimes reported by the police in London in 2024/25, compared with 938,020 in the previous reporting year. Types of crime that have increased recently include violent crimes, shoplifting, and theft from the person offences. One positive is that the number of homicide offences in London has fallen to much lower levels than seen in the late 2010s. Additionally, the Metropolitan Police force area has a lower crime rate than many of the UK's other major police forces, such as West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and South Yorkshire. Police recruitment drive ends era of cuts  The rise in crime in London happened alongside a decline in both personnel and funding for the London Metropolitan Police. Compared with 2010 for example, there were around 3,000 fewer police officers in 2018, while annual funding was reduced to around 3.3 billion pounds between 2013/14 and 2018/19, compared with 3.62 billion in 2012/13. These cuts were due to the policy of austerity that was implemented by the UK government during that time period, but this has recently been replaced by pledges to increase spending and to recruit more police. In 2024/25, the budget for the Metropolitan Police was over five billion pounds, while the number of officers in 2024 increased to around 35,310.

There were 938,020 crimes recorded in London in the 2023/24 reporting year, compared with 887,870 in the previous year. During this time period, crime in London increased steadily, with the figure of 912,487 in 2019/20 a previous peak when there were approximately 102.4 crimes per 1,000 people taking place in the UK capital, compared with 105.8 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.

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

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.

There were 252,545 violent crime offences recorded by the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police Forces in London in 2023/24 an increase when compared with the previous reporting year. From a low of 186,488 violent crimes in 2015/16, violent crime has increased in almost every year. This reflects a pattern of increasing violent crime replicated across England and Wales as a whole, with a peak of 2.1 million offences reported in 2022/23. Overall offences also rising The overall crime figures for London also show a trend of increasing crime in the UK capital. In 2015/16 for example, there were 743,728 crimes recorded in London, compared to 938,020 in 2023/24. This follows a similar pattern seen in the rest of the United Kingdom, which has witnessed an uptick in crime after reaching historic lows in the mid-2010s. In 2013/14 for example, there were approximately 62 crimes per 100,000 people in England and Wales, compared with 89.7 in 2023/24. Police budgets rising again Due to the austerity policies enacted by UK governments in the 2010s, the amount the UK government spent on the police was effectively frozen between 2013/14 and 2016/17. This policy has since been reversed, with the overall UK police budget reaching 25.3 billion pounds in 2022/23. The amount budgeted for the Metropolitan Police by the Mayor of London for 2023/24 was 4.53 billion British pounds, a significant increase on the 3.33 billion budgeted in 2018/19.

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2024/25, at **** crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland, which had **** crimes per 1,000 population, and Northern Ireland, at **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2023/24. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just **** by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2024/25, there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. Although this was a slight decline on the previous two years, it was still far higher than during the mid-2010s. While crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend went into reverse in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10, for example, government spending on the police stood at around **** billion pounds, with this cut to *****billion in 2013/14. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of officers fell by 20,000, although the number of officers returned to pre-austerity levels by the 2020s. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from *** billion pounds in 2009/10 to just **** billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. In 2022, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** days in 2018. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent years.

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. This public dataset is hosted in Google BigQuery and is included in BigQuery's 1TB/mo of free tier processing. This means that each user receives 1TB of free BigQuery processing every month, which can be used to run queries on this public dataset. Watch this short video to learn how to get started quickly using BigQuery to access public datasets. What is BigQuery .

Dataset

This dataset was created by Vivek_anandh

Contents

This is the tenth report in an annual series combining crimes recorded by the police and interviews from the British Crime Survey (BCS) for the financial year 2010/11. Each source has different strengths and weaknesses but together they provide a more comprehensive picture of crime than could be obtained from either series alone. Additional explanatory notes are available in the User Guide to Home Office Crime Statistics.

Longer term datasets contain https://data.gov.uk/dataset/0e26ee1b-26b7-406e-a3b1-f3481b324977/local-police-recorded-crime-data" class="govuk-link">police recorded crime for police force areas and local authorities

https://data.gov.uk/dataset/ea7a5bd4-4c26-4ea3-b1ff-c5c0dfe9fcfd/crime-in-england-and-wales-2010-11" class="govuk-link">Crimes detected in England & Wales 2010/11 reports on the levels and trends in detections and detection rates in England and Wales.

The last annual crime statistics https://data.gov.uk/dataset/df7e3554-2a62-497a-bbd6-2c3982dba5a5/crime-in-england-and-wales-2009-10" class="govuk-link">Crime in England and Wales 2009/10 was published in July 2010.

See the https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesannualsupplementarytables" class="govuk-link">Crime Survey supplementary tables on the nature of: burglary, vehicle-related theft, bicycle theft, household theft, personal and other theft and vandalism.

Context:

Crime in major metropolitan areas, such as London, occurs in distinct patterns. This data covers the number of criminal reports by month, LSOA borough, and major/minor category from Jan 2008-Dec 2016.

Content:

13M rows containing counts of criminal reports by month, LSOA borough, and major/minor category.

Acknowledgements:

Txt file was pulled from Google Cloud Platform and converted to csv. Photo by James Sutton.

Inspiration:

Are there seasonal or time-of-week/day changes in crime occurrences? Any boroughs where particular crimes are increasing or decreasing? Policy makers use this data to plan upcoming budgets and deployment--can you use previous year crime reports to reliably predict later trends? If you normalize by borough population, can you find any areas where crime is more or less likely?

Black people were over twice as likely to be arrested as white people – there were 20.4 arrests for every 1,000 black people, and 9.4 for every 1,000 white people.

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 ward 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

Choose from the three data sets (‘Sub-Ward data’, ‘Ward data’ or ‘Borough data’) according to your requirements.

‘Sub-Ward data’ counts the number of crimes in each sub ward area of London (Census Lower Super Output Area or LSOA) per month according to crime type. Use this data if you need to analyse crime data at a sub ward level. Because not all crimes can be matched to a specific LSOA area, you should not use this data set to count crimes by ward or borough. For these purposes use one of the other datasets according to the level of geographic precision you need.

‘Ward data’ counts the number of crimes in each ward 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 wards. Because not all crimes can be matched to a ward area, you should not use this data set to count crimes by borough. For this purpose use one of the Borough level dataset provided.

‘Borough data’ counts the number of crimes in each borough area of London per month, according to crime type.

Each of the data sets will contain the latest two years of data available. 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)

Please refer here for further information.

In 2023/24 there were 56,263 burglary offences recorded in London, an increase when compared with the previous reporting year. During the provided time period, the reporting year with the most burglary offences recorded was 2018/19, when there were approximately 81,463 burglaries.

Data tables relating to offences involving weapons as recorded by police and hospital episode statistics.

Extract from GLA Release: Official Sub-Ward, Ward and Borough level crime counts. This page contains the ward level data file for London Borough of Barnet Click here for corresponding LSOA level data: Recorded Crime Summary Data for London: LSOA Level Click here for corresponding Borough level data: Recorded Crime Summary Data for London: Borough Level ‘Ward data’ counts the number of crimes in each ward area of London Borough of Barnet per month, according to crime type. Use this data if you need to analyse crime data according to the location of geographic wards. Because not all crimes can be matched to a ward area, you should not use this data set to count crimes by borough. For this purpose use the Borough level dataset linked to above. ‘Borough data’ counts the number of crimes in each borough area of London per month, according to crime type. Each of the data sets will contain the latest two years of data available. 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)