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There’s no denying that London has its fair share of not-so-nice areas. The capital city is home to all 10 of the UK’s pickpocketing hotspots, crimes on the Underground are reportedly up by 1.3 percent and we all have a local alleyway that is best avoided at night. But, it turns out that there are also several parts of London that boast some of the lowest crime rates in the country. And one south London neighbourhood has just been named the safest place in the entire UK.
Security training platform Get Licensed has ranked the UK’s local authorities according to how safe they are. It compared police-recorded crime with year-on-year change in crime severity, reoffending and antisocial behaviour, and counted CCTV in public spaces to determine its ranking.
The south London town of Sutton emerged as the nation’s safest place to live. It had an annual crime rate of 61 per 1,000 people and saw a 2.75 percent fall in crime year on year. Get Licensed also counted 230 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 people in Sutton and found a reoffending rate of 15.74 percent (the average rate across the whole of the UK is 26.5 percent). It added that ‘when there are crimes in Sutton, they tend to be robberies or thefts, with little to no reports of weapons possession’. Overall, the town earned a safety score of 8.09 out of 10.
Sutton wasn’t the only London postcode to score highly. In fact the list of the top 10 safest areas in the country was dominated by the capital city. Kingston-upon-Thames was named the third safest place in the UK with a score of 7.81 out of 10, Richmond ranked fifth, Hounslow was seventh, Redbridge was ninth and Barnet was 10th.
But the research also found that London is home to two of the most dangerous places in Britain. With a crime rate more than triple that of Sutton (194.8 per 1,000 people) and an overall safety score of just 0.87, Camden was named the least safe area in the country. It was closely followed by Islington, which has an annual crime rate of 140.8 per 1,000 people and was given overall safety score of 1.88 out of 10.
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