How we calculate Safety & Crime

• UK Police Data (Home Office) — street-level recorded crime, published monthly.
• Office for National Statistics (ONS) — Census 2021 usual resident population, and Open Geography boundaries.
• Police force open data feeds, as published through data.police.uk.

Crime figures come directly from UK Police Data. Population denominators come from the ONS. Rates are calculated only where a reliable denominator exists for the same mapped area — otherwise we publish the counts and say so. Fammove does not rank areas by crime, and every figure is shown for information only. We display official data without modification.

The month shown beside each Safety & Crime section is the latest source month held after the most recent successful refresh, so it updates automatically.

The headline figure is recorded crimes per 1,000 residents over a rolling 12-month period. It is built from street-level crime records published monthly by data.police.uk, the official police open-data service for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Only records with a published location are included, because every figure is joined to a mapped area. The principal categories we report are:

• Anti-social behaviour
• Violence and sexual offences
• Burglary
• Vehicle crime
• Criminal damage and arson
• Other theft
• Shoplifting
• Public order
• Drugs
• Robbery
• Theft from the person
• Bicycle theft
• Possession of weapons
• Other crime

Raw totals are misleading: a large town will always record more crime than a village. Every rate therefore uses an ONS Census 2021 usual resident population for the same mapped area.

Where no compatible population exists for an area, we publish the counts and say so — we never estimate a denominator to produce a rate.

Local authorities use the official ONS district boundary, so the numerator and denominator cover exactly the same ground.

Towns are mapped as a radius around the town's school centre. The population is the sum of the ONS Census 2021 middle-layer super output areas whose population-weighted centre falls inside that radius, which keeps the numerator and denominator compatible. Town areas can overlap, so town figures are not additive.

Counties are composed from the districts within them, so a county figure always reconciles with the districts beneath it.

The trend is the percentage change in the rolling 12-month rate against the previous 12-month period. Changes smaller than 2% are described as broadly unchanged, because month-to-month recording practice moves figures by that much on its own.

A town's rate is always shown next to a named comparator — usually its county. We describe the difference as a lower, similar or higher recorded rate. A difference within 10% of the comparator is called similar.

We do not use the words safe, unsafe, dangerous or high-risk anywhere on Fammove, and we never rank or score an area on safety.

data.police.uk publishes one national release each month, usually in the middle of the month and covering the month before last. Fammove checks for a new release automatically on a daily cycle, and downloads it once nationally — never per county.

1. Discover the newest month published by the official source.
2. Download street-level records for every district boundary in scope.
3. Aggregate districts, derive towns from the same incident points, compose counties.
4. Join ONS Census 2021 population denominators and calculate rates.
5. Validate the whole release before anything is published.
6. Publish atomically, so the site never shows a half-updated dataset.

A new month only replaces the live dataset when it clears every blocking check below. If any check fails, the release is held, the previously verified month stays on the site unchanged, and the failure is raised internally for review.

• Source files downloaded — both the police and ONS feeds responded for the month.
• Records imported — area snapshots were built and contain records.
• Population denominators present — the great majority of areas have an ONS denominator; areas without one are published as counts only.
• Category totals reconcile — the categories in every area sum exactly to that area’s recorded total.
• No duplicate records — every mapped area appears exactly once.
• Geographic coverage complete — the release covers the mapped areas it is expected to.
• Rates calculated — every area with a denominator has a rate.

Where you see “Verified official dataset” beside the update month, that release passed all of these checks.

Every release is stored as an immutable version: the source month, the validation outcome, the coverage achieved and the exact time it was published. Superseded months are retained rather than overwritten, so a figure shown on Fammove can always be traced back to the official release it came from.

Because the newest official month is roughly two months behind the present day, the update month you see is the latest month the police have published — not the current month.

Alongside the per-release checks, the pipeline is monitored continuously on five factors: geography mapping completeness, validation gates passed, publication coverage across mapped areas, freshness against the newest official month, and execution reliability over the last twelve months. Sustained problems in any factor hold the dataset at its last verified release rather than degrading what families see.

Recorded crime counts reflect what was reported to and recorded by the police — not everything that happens, and not personal risk. Areas with more shops, stations and nightlife usually record more crime because more people pass through them. Fammove presents these figures as information, never as a judgement about an area.

Recorded crime is not the same as crime experienced. Reporting rates differ by offence and by community, and boundaries around busy centres pick up crime affecting visitors rather than residents.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Recorded crime: data.police.uk. Population: ONS Census 2021.

• Recorded crime: data.police.uk street-level open data, updated monthly.
• Population: ONS Census 2021, usual resident population.
• Boundaries and centroids: ONS Open Geography Portal.

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