Editorial & Data Standards
How CrimeTrends collects, processes, publishes, and corrects UK crime data. Last updated: .
What We Publish
CrimeTrends publishes crime intelligence derived exclusively from the Home Office Open Data published at data.police.uk. This covers recorded crime incidents from 43 police forces in England and Wales, updated monthly.
For each area (city, ward, and outcode), we publish:
- Monthly crime totals and historical 12-month trends
- Crime rates per 1,000 residents (normalised by ONS Census 2021 population)
- Crime type breakdowns (12 Home Office offence categories)
- Year-on-year and month-on-month change indicators
- National and county-level rankings by annual crime rate
- Policing neighbourhood context from Police.uk (team, priorities, events)
We do not publish:
- Data for Scotland or Northern Ireland (not covered by police.uk)
- Individual-level or suspect-level data of any kind
- Predictions, risk forecasts, or AI-generated crime scores
- Proprietary or purchased crime datasets
Data Collection & Processing
Source
All crime data originates from data.police.uk/data/, which aggregates submissions from 43 police forces. We do not scrape or modify the source files.
Normalisation
Monthly crime counts are divided by ONS Census 2021 usual resident population at LTLA22 boundary level, then multiplied by 12 to produce an annual rate per 1,000 residents. This allows fair comparison between areas of very different sizes.
Geographic joins
Police.uk provides approximate street-level locations (LSOA reference). We join these to ONS ward and LTLA boundaries using PostGIS spatial joins on the 2022 boundary release. Postcode-level assignments use the ONS Postcode Directory.
Rankings
National and county rankings are computed monthly from all 331 LTLA22 local authorities with sufficient data. Areas are ranked by annualised crime rate, not raw counts, so population differences do not distort comparisons.
Pipeline
Processing runs automatically after police.uk releases new monthly data (typically between the 10th–20th of each month, 1–2 months after the reference period). The pipeline is deterministic: given the same source data, it produces the same output every time.
Update Schedule
Police.uk releases data
Day 10–20 of each month
Data covers activity from ~2 months prior
We process & publish
Within 24–48 hours
Of police.uk data becoming available
Policing team data
Monthly refresh
Neighbourhood teams, priorities, events
Note on delayed data: Some police forces submit data later than others. When an area's most recent data is more than two months behind the national average, we display a "Data Delayed" notice on that area's page. Rankings use the most recent data available for each area.
Known Limitations
Understanding these limitations is essential for correctly interpreting our data.
Recorded crime ≠ total crime
Police.uk contains only recorded crimes — incidents reported to and recorded by police. The Crime Survey for England and Wales consistently shows that total victimisation is 2–4× higher than recorded crime, as many offences go unreported.
Location imprecision
Police.uk anonymises exact crime locations by snapping them to the nearest street or grid reference within an LSOA. This means postcode-level data is an approximation; it reflects nearby activity, not precise street addresses.
Force recording practices vary
Different police forces have different recording practices and thresholds. Year-on-year changes in a single force's statistics can sometimes reflect recording changes rather than genuine crime trends.
Population estimates are 2021 Census
Crime rates are normalised using ONS 2021 Census population data. For areas with significant population change since 2021 (new developments, student cities), rates may slightly overstate or understate actual risk.
Scotland and Northern Ireland not covered
Police.uk only covers the 43 police forces of England and Wales. Scottish and Northern Irish crime data are published by separate agencies under different schemas and are not included in this platform.
Correction Policy
We take data accuracy seriously. If you believe a statistic on CrimeTrends is incorrect, please contact us:
Please include: the affected page URL, the specific figure you believe is incorrect, and where possible, a reference to the correct source data.
Our process:
- We acknowledge all correction requests within 2 business days.
- We verify the reported discrepancy against the original police.uk source data.
- If a processing error is confirmed, we correct it and re-run the affected pipeline stage.
- If the data correctly reflects the police.uk source, we explain this in our response. (Occasionally the source data itself contains anomalies — in these cases we note the discrepancy on the affected page.)
- Corrections are reflected in the live site within 24 hours of confirmation.
Note: We cannot modify crime statistics upon request for commercial, reputational, or property market reasons. All data reflects the underlying police.uk source.
Licensing & Attribution
Crime data is sourced from Police.uk, published by the Home Office and individual police forces under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL).
Population data is sourced from the ONS Census 2021, also published under OGL v3.0. Property transaction data is sourced from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, OGL v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
On This Page
Data Integrity
- checkSource: Police.uk (OGL v3.0)
- checkPopulation: ONS Census 2021
- checkNo paid placement or removal
- checkAlgorithmic, not editorial
- checkMonthly pipeline refresh