About this data
- Westminster, and to a lesser extent Camden, Kensington and Chelsea, and Islington, have very high rates per resident because millions of people work in, shop in or visit these areas but are not counted in the resident population.
- The City of London is not shown: ONS does not publish rates for it because its resident population is so small.
- The latest year uses ONS's published figures (rates based on mid-2024 population estimates).
- Years end in June: 2026 is July 2025 to June 2026. Rates use ONS mid-year population estimates for the local authorities in each area (mid-2025 for the year ending June 2026).
- Changes over time partly reflect how crimes are recorded. Recording improved substantially after 2014, which pushed up recorded violence and sexual offences in particular.
- Greater Manchester Police introduced a new IT system in July 2019, after which many crimes went unrecorded; its figures for the years ending June 2020 and 2021 are likely to be undercounts.
- Rates are per resident, so areas with large numbers of commuters, shoppers, tourists or night-time visitors — especially city centres — have higher rates than the risk to residents alone would suggest.
- Police recorded crime depends on how many crimes are reported and how each force records them, so differences between areas partly reflect recording practice. Fraud is excluded, as it is recorded nationally rather than by local forces.
This chart appears in Crime.