How to use police.uk crime maps, and what they can and cannot show
Police.uk shows crimes and anti-social behaviour recorded by the police, mapped by month to approximate street-level points. It is useful for seeing what has been reported near you, but locations are deliberately moved to the nearest anonymous map point, dates are shown only by month, records can change later, and many crimes are never reported to the police. To say whether crime is rising or how one area compares with another, use the ONS figures for police force areas and the Crime Survey instead.
What police.uk is
Police.uk lets you type a postcode or place and see a map of crimes and anti-social behaviour (ASB) recorded nearby, month by month, with the outcome of each case where known. The same data is published in bulk on data.police.uk . According to its about page , the data comes from the 43 geographic police forces in England and Wales, the British Transport Police, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Ministry of Justice, and on 13 October 2026 it covered September 2023 to August 2026. Police Scotland is not included.
Sources: Police.uk, data.police.uk, about page
Step 1: look up your area
Go to police.uk and enter a postcode, town or street.
Choose the crime map for the neighbourhood. You will see the latest published month by default, usually about two months behind the current date.
Change the month, or filter by crime type, to see more.
Click a point to see the crimes snapped to it and the latest outcome of each.
For more than a few months, or to count crimes yourself, use data.police.uk instead: the custom download gives CSV files by force and month, and the street-level crimes API returns crimes "within a 1 mile radius of a single point, or within a custom area".
Sources: custom download, street-level crimes API
Step 2: understand how locations are anonymised
The points on the map are not where crimes happened. The about page says the locations "always represent the approximate location of a crime", not the exact place it happened. Every crime is moved to the nearest point on a master list of anonymous map points, chosen to sit over the centre of a street or above a public place such as a park, car park, supermarket or nightclub, and each with a catchment of "at least eight postal addresses or no postal addresses at all".
This has practical effects:
a cluster of points on one street may include crimes from nearby side streets;
crimes in a shopping centre or station are often snapped to that building, which makes it look like a hotspot;
a single point can never be read as a particular house or business.
Dates are also shortened: the published record shows only the year and month.
Step 3: know the known issues
The data.police.uk about page lists "major, difficult to fix, issues". Among them:
Location accuracy. "Estimates of geocoding accuracy in different forces range from 60% to 97%."
Constantly changing data. Each upload is a snapshot. Crimes may later be reclassified or found not to be crimes, but the published month is rarely refreshed.
Court result matching. Linking a crime to a court outcome succeeds in between 19% and 97% of cases, depending on the area.
Missing outcomes. The British Transport Police and the Police Service of Northern Ireland do not provide outcome data.
Some crimes cannot be mapped at all; if the nearest map point is more than 20km away, the coordinates are set to zero.
Worked example: one month in central Birmingham
On 13 October 2026 we asked the data.police.uk street-level API for all records within one mile of Birmingham city centre (latitude 52.4796, longitude -1.9026) for August 2026, the latest month available. It returned 1,782 records. The largest categories were violence and sexual offences (700), shoplifting (234), other theft (163) and public order (149).
What this can support: "Police recorded around 1,700 crimes and 67 ASB incidents within a mile of central Birmingham in August 2026, on police.uk data." Note that 67 of the 1,782 were anti-social behaviour incidents, which are not crimes, so they should be taken out of any crime count.
What it cannot support:
A crime rate. A city centre has few residents but many visitors, workers and shops, so crimes per resident would be meaningless.
A trend from two months. Monthly counts move with seasons, events and police operations. Compare the same month across several years at least.
A clearance rate. In this extract 857 records were still "Under investigation". Outcomes for recent months fill in over time, so a recent month always looks less resolved than an older one.
When to use ONS figures instead
Police.uk shows police recorded crime only. The ONS says police recorded crime is "not considered a reliable indicator of overall crime trends because of changes in police activity and recording practices", and that only an estimated 36% of crimes measured by the Crime Survey were reported to the police ( Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2026 ). A rise on the map may mean more crime, more reporting, or better recording.
For comparing areas, the ONS publishes police force area data tables giving police recorded crime by force area and by community safety partnership area, which the ONS says "usually equate to local authorities". Divide by each area's population to get a rate before comparing; see rates per 100,000 . For whether crime is going up or down nationally, see how to check a claim about crime going up or down and is crime going up or down .
Sources: Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2026, police force area data tables
Checklist
Month and area of the map noted
ASB incidents separated from crimes
Locations treated as approximate, never as an address
Several years of the same month compared before talking about trends
Outcome status treated as provisional for recent months
ONS force area counts turned into rates before comparing places
Crime Survey consulted for national trends
Official sources used in this guide
Sources: police.uk, data.police.uk: about the data, data.police.uk: data downloads, data.police.uk: street-level crimes API, ONS: Crime in England and Wales, year ending March 2026, ONS: police force area data tables
Questions
Why is a crime shown outside my house?
Because your street's centre point is a map point. Crimes from anywhere in its catchment are placed there, so the point does not mean a crime happened at your address.
Source: police.uk
Why can't I see last month?
Forces upload each month's data after it ends, followed by checks and anonymisation, so the latest month is usually around two months old.
Source: police.uk
Does police.uk cover Scotland?
No. It covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For Scotland, see Scottish Government statistics .
Source: police.uk
Can I use police.uk to compare two towns?
Only with care. Use the ONS police force area tables, turn counts into rates using each area's population, and compare whole years rather than raw monthly map counts.
Source: police.uk