Crime and Safety in Letchworth Garden City
Last updated: 07 Jun 2026
Letchworth Garden City is among the top 10 most dangerous medium-sized towns in Hertfordshire, and is the 33rd most dangerous overall out of Hertfordshire's 140 towns, villages, and cities. The overall crime rate in Letchworth Garden City in 2026 is 56 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares favourably to Hertfordshire's overall crime rate, coming in 8% lower than the Hertfordshire rate of 60 per 1,000 daytime population. For England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as a whole, Letchworth Garden City is the 77th safest medium-sized town, and the 1,879th most dangerous location out of all towns, cities, and villages.
In September 2024, Letchworth Garden City had the worst crime rate in Hertfordshire for shoplifting, with 52 crimes reported and a crime rate of 1.4 per 1,000 daytime population. And in February 2026, Letchworth Garden City was the worst medium-sized town in Hertfordshire for criminal damage and arson, with 21 crimes reported and a crime rate of 0.56 per 1,000 daytime population. April 2026 was also a bad month for Letchworth Garden City residents, when it was again Hertfordshire's most dangerous medium-sized town for criminal damage and arson, recording 20 crimes at a rate of 0.53 per 1,000 daytime population.
The most common crimes in Letchworth Garden City are violence and sexual offences, with 1,017 offences during 2026, giving a crime rate of 27. This is 3.1% lower than 2025's figure of 1,049 offences and a difference of 0.92 from 2025's crime rate of 28. Letchworth Garden City's least common crime is theft from the person, with 13 offences recorded in 2026, an increase of 8% from 2025's figure of 12 crimes.
Letchworth Garden City 2026 Crime Scorecard
Top 10 Most Dangerous
Medium-Sized Towns, Hertfordshire
10% lower, regional crime rate
East of England
23% lower, national crime rate
England, Wales & NI
Local Crime in Context
As of April 2026, the crime rate in Letchworth Garden City is 10% lower than the East of England and 23% lower than the England, Wales & Northern Ireland overall figure.
Letchworth Garden City Crime Rate Over Time
| Letchworth Garden City | |
| East of England | |
| England, Wales & NI |
Letchworth Garden City Crime Map
Incidents mapped in Letchworth Garden City represent the time frame between January 2016 and April 2026. Each point on the map represents an area where crimes have been recorded locally.
Use Crime Map
Hover over a point to see a breakdown of crime types recorded at that location. You can also filter by individual crime types, or use a combinations of offences to visualise the data you need.
See How Letchworth Garden City Compares
You can compare Letchworth Garden City's crime statistics against any other town, village, or city from across the country. Search for a location's name below to see how they stack up.
Introduction to Letchworth Garden City's crime statistics
This crime profile provides a detailed view of crime and safety around Letchworth Garden City up to April 2026, the most recent data release available. The crime figures and statistics have been calculated across each of Letchworth Garden City's 943 postcodes using three area sizes for comparison:
- Within a Five-Minute Walk
- Within a Ten-Minute Walk
- Within a Fifteen-Minute Walk
Individual crime risk scores and index figures are for the 12-month period ending April 2026 unless otherwise stated.
CrimeRate Insights
Looking into a specific address in Letchworth Garden City? CrimeRate Insights reports convert raw numbers into practical insight for any location, from single addresses and postcodes, up to major towns and cities.
Crime rates don’t happen by themselves; they follow people and patterns. Where crowds gather - near pubs and late-night venues, around the station, by supermarkets and forecourts - incidents naturally concentrate.
That doesn’t mean an area is "bad"; it usually means footfall is higher.
Your report explores these factors in a calm, non-judgemental way, putting the numbers in context and helping you spot what’s typical for places like this.
Crime Risk Scores
Letchworth Garden City • 12 Months Ending April 2026
The typical five-minute walk within Letchworth Garden City has a crime risk score of 506. This is based on analysis of 943 nearby areas within Letchworth Garden City, with "most" referring to roughly two thirds of the nearby locations.
Crime risk scores are on a scale of 1 to 1,000 and consider the severity of the crimes involved, as determined by sentencing guidelines. A score of 1 represents the lowest risk, and 1,000 the highest risk. This approach ensures that - unlike overall crime rate figures - bicycle theft is not given the same importance in Letchworth Garden City's risk scores as, for example, robbery, or violence & sexual offences.
Within a five-minute walk of the typical location in Letchworth Garden City, crime risk scores are typically around 506, while in Hertfordshire they are average 456.
Areas within a ten-minute walk typically see crime risk scores of 575 (472 for Hertfordshire), and scores within a fifteen-minute walk are most often around 622 (Hertfordshire 489).
Trends in Crime Risk
Letchworth Garden City
Calculated via Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess, the Seasonality Adjusted line represents the original data with seasonality subtracted, and the Trend line has been plotted unadjusted. Overall trend direction has been identified using the Mann-Kendall trend test, and rate calculated from the slope of the best-fit line identified from linear regression.
No trend could be found in Letchworth Garden City's crime risk scores over the last 10 years, and the trend may well be static.
Looking at the previous five years, the trend in Letchworth Garden City's crime risk score is up by 12%. While potentially a good indicator of the overall risk trend, cross-referencing with major cultural events and Covid's impact during this time is advised.
Over the last year, Letchworth Garden City's crime risk score has shown a downward trend of approximately 7%, indicating that the risk profile is going down. This is an extremely short time period for crime trend analysis, and caution should be exercised when interpreting this figure.
Crime Rates and Indexes
Letchworth Garden City
The CrimeRate Index shows how crime rates compare against the national average.
1.0 equals the average
2.0 is double
3.0 triple
0.5 is half and
0.25 a quarter.
Highest Crime Rates
Letchworth Garden City • 12 Months Ending April 2026
Excluding other crime and other theft because their geographic location is often not relevant, anti-social behaviour as its definition is too wide, and bicycle theft for its specificity.
Violence and Sexual Offences have a crime rate of 27 reports per 1,000 people in Letchworth Garden City, which is 0.89 times the national average. This figure is calculated from 1,017 crime reports logged by Hertfordshire Police during the 12-month period ending April 2026.
For the same period, Hertfordshire Police recorded 26 reports of Possession of Weapons in Letchworth Garden City, resulting in a crime rate of 0.69 reports per 1,000, and a CrimeRate Index of 0.88.
The crime rate for Criminal Damage and Arson is 0.85 times the national average at 5.36 reports per 1,000. This is from 201 crime reports reported to Hertfordshire Police.
Most Significant 3-Year Increases in Crime Types
Letchworth Garden City
Excluding other crime and other theft, anti-social behaviour, and bicycle theft, and calculated with the same STL method described in Trends in Crime Risk, using CrimeRate Index figures to identify crime types that are trending above or below the national average, and the analysis timeframe limited to the last three years.
Public Order offences are trending upwards, and have a CrimeRate Index of 0.50 for the month of April 2026.
Three years ago, the monthly Public Order CrimeRate Index was 0.67 times the national average, and the current trend indicates an increase of 25% over this timeframe.
Possession of Weapons offences are trending upwards, and have a CrimeRate Index of 0.71 for the month of April 2026.
Three years ago, the monthly Possession of Weapons CrimeRate Index was 0.43 times the national average, and the current trend indicates an increase of 65% over this timeframe.
Violence and Sexual Offences are trending upwards, and have a CrimeRate Index of 0.89 for the month of April 2026.
Three years ago, the monthly Violence and Sexual Offences CrimeRate Index was 0.76 times the national average, and the current trend indicates an increase of 17% over this timeframe.
Most Significant 3-Year Decreases in Crime Types
Letchworth Garden City
Calculated with the same methodology as the largest increases section above.
Vehicle Crime offences are trending downwards, and have a CrimeRate Index of 0.91 for the month of April 2026.
Three years ago, the monthly Vehicle Crime CrimeRate Index was 1.48 times the national average, and the current trend indicates a decrease of 39% over this timeframe.
Robbery offences are trending downwards, though the CrimeRate Index three years ago is too low to measure, and the trend should be reviewed with caution.
Crime Type Breakdown & Heat Map
Letchworth Garden City • 12 Months Ending April 2026
Size and colour reflect the CrimeRate Index figures for each type of crime.
Letchworth Garden City | Hertfordshire | East of England | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Type | Count | Rate | Index | Count | Rate | Index | Count | Rate | Index |
| Anti-Social Behaviour | 600 | 16.04 | 1.14 | 21,601 | 15.50 | 1.10 | 74,182 | 10.23 | 0.72 |
| Bicycle Theft | 23 | 0.60 | 0.91 | 917 | 0.66 | 0.90 | 5,325 | 0.72 | 0.99 |
| Burglary | 82 | 2.20 | 0.70 | 3,683 | 2.65 | 0.85 | 17,593 | 2.42 | 0.77 |
| Criminal Damage and Arson | 201 | 5.36 | 0.85 | 6,931 | 4.97 | 0.79 | 40,107 | 5.51 | 0.88 |
| Drugs | 66 | 1.74 | 0.56 | 3,411 | 2.45 | 0.79 | 18,935 | 2.59 | 0.84 |
| Other Crime | 38 | 1.02 | 0.55 | 1,983 | 1.41 | 0.76 | 12,241 | 1.70 | 0.92 |
| Other Theft | 180 | 4.81 | 0.85 | 8,371 | 6.01 | 1.06 | 34,703 | 4.78 | 0.84 |
| Possession of Weapons | 26 | 0.69 | 0.88 | 861 | 0.62 | 0.73 | 5,931 | 0.83 | 0.98 |
| Public Order | 136 | 3.64 | 0.63 | 5,446 | 3.91 | 0.67 | 32,088 | 4.42 | 0.76 |
| Robbery | 17 | 0.46 | 0.68 | 991 | 0.70 | 0.59 | 4,492 | 0.61 | 0.52 |
| Shoplifting | 217 | 5.79 | 0.81 | 8,328 | 5.99 | 0.84 | 43,068 | 5.94 | 0.83 |
| Theft From the Person | 13 | 0.35 | 0.35 | 954 | 0.68 | 0.44 | 3,654 | 0.52 | 0.34 |
| Vehicle Crime | 66 | 1.74 | 0.40 | 6,049 | 4.35 | 1.01 | 27,821 | 3.84 | 0.89 |
| Violence and Sexual Offences | 1,017 | 27.16 | 0.89 | 36,109 | 25.93 | 0.85 | 200,684 | 27.65 | 0.91 |
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Total Crime by Year
Letchworth Garden City | Hertfordshire | East of England | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Count | Rate | Index | Count | Rate | Index | Count | Rate | Index |
| 2026 | 2,082 | 55.56 | 0.78 | 84,034 | 60.33 | 0.84 | 446,642 | 61.53 | 0.85 |
| 2025 | 2,445 | 65.71 | 0.89 | 82,503 | 59.54 | 0.80 | 441,082 | 61.31 | 0.83 |
| 2024 | 1,982 | 53.59 | 0.72 | 73,907 | 53.85 | 0.71 | 443,460 | 62.34 | 0.83 |
| 2023 | 2,153 | 58.60 | 0.76 | 76,470 | 56.33 | 0.71 | 474,715 | 67.51 | 0.85 |
| 2022 | 1,909 | 52.15 | 0.69 | 74,426 | 55.22 | 0.72 | 471,617 | 67.78 | 0.88 |
| 2021 | 1,849 | 50.62 | 0.75 | 72,746 | 54.15 | 0.79 | 437,869 | 63.51 | 0.93 |
| 2020 | 2,416 | 66.15 | 0.90 | 82,388 | 61.55 | 0.83 | 465,376 | 67.88 | 0.92 |
| 2019 | 2,470 | 67.58 | 0.89 | 86,563 | 64.71 | 0.85 | 482,539 | 70.87 | 0.93 |
| 2018 | 2,313 | 62.95 | 0.89 | 84,008 | 63.06 | 0.89 | 439,882 | 64.91 | 0.91 |
| 2017 | 2,149 | 58.47 | 0.92 | 77,119 | 58.04 | 0.91 | 396,747 | 58.76 | 0.92 |
| 2016 | 600 | 16.31 | 0.86 | 21,894 | 16.50 | 0.87 | 116,493 | 17.30 | 0.91 |
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Letchworth Garden City Compared to Nearby Medium-Sized Towns
12 Months Ending Apr 2026
| Medium-Sized Town | Total Crimes | Crime Rate | Rate Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hatfield | 4,688 | 88.56 | 59% more dangerous |
| Elstree and Borehamwood | 3,653 | 73.14 | 32% more dangerous |
| Cheshunt | 3,156 | 72.51 | 31% more dangerous |
| Hoddesdon | 2,750 | 65.82 | 18% more dangerous |
| Welwyn Garden City | 3,809 | 59.81 | 8% more dangerous |
| Hertford | 2,036 | 56.52 | 1.7% more dangerous |
| Letchworth Garden City | 2,082 | 55.56 | - |
| Bishop's Stortford | 2,494 | 52.47 | 6% safer |
| Bushey | 1,440 | 49.10 | 12% safer |
| Rickmansworth | 1,339 | 47.31 | 15% safer |
| Hitchin | 1,828 | 46.31 | 17% safer |
| Harpenden | 1,179 | 35.14 | 37% safer |
Comparing Letchworth Garden City to the UK's Major Cities
12 Months Ending Apr 2026
| City Name | Crime Rate | Rate Difference |
|---|---|---|
| Letchworth Garden City | 55.56 | - |
| Cardiff | 79.55 | 43% more dangerous |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | 82.69 | 49% more dangerous |
| Sheffield | 84.09 | 51% more dangerous |
| Leicester | 97.87 | 76% more dangerous |
| Bristol | 104.64 | 88% more dangerous |
| Birmingham | 105.05 | 89% more dangerous |
| Liverpool | 106.48 | 92% more dangerous |
| Leeds | 107.10 | 93% more dangerous |
| Nottingham | 107.74 | 94% more dangerous |
| Westminster | 125.00 | 125% more dangerous |
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Offences In and Around Letchworth Garden City's Parks & Leisure Spaces
Limited to spaces in Letchworth Garden City that are named and have had crimes recorded within their boundaries in the 12 months to Apr 2026.
| Name | ASB | Drugs | Public Order | Robbery | VSO | All Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norton Common | 23 | 4 | 2 | - | 17 | 16 |
| The Wynd Community Garden | 16 | 1 | 9 | 1 | 31 | 24 |
| Howard Park | 12 | 1 | 2 | - | 13 | 7 |
| Howard Garden | 6 | - | 2 | - | 12 | 3 |
| Grange Playing Field | 10 | 2 | - | - | 6 | 3 |
| Icknield Way Cemetery | 12 | - | - | - | 8 | 3 |
| Wilbury Allotment Gardens | 12 | - | - | - | 8 | 3 |
| Howard Garden Bowling Club | 4 | - | 2 | - | 11 | 3 |
| North Hertfordshire Leisure Centre | - | 2 | - | 1 | 14 | 9 |
| Jackmans Playing Fields | 6 | 4 | - | - | 12 | 6 |
| Fearnhill Sports Centre | 16 | - | 1 | - | 19 | 7 |
| Norton Allotments | 2 | - | - | 1 | 26 | 14 |
| The Green | 4 | - | - | - | 1 | 0 |
Recent Crimes in Letchworth Garden City
The 20 most recent crime reports in Letchworth Garden City.
| Date | Crime Type | Location | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Dunlin | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Rushby Walk | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Parking Area | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Daisy Court | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Baldock Lane | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Rushby Walk | |
| April 2026 | Anti-social behaviour | On or near Norton Way South | |
| April 2026 | Criminal damage and arson | On or near Marmet Avenue | |
| April 2026 | Drugs | On or near Stoneley | |
| April 2026 | Drugs | On or near Maddles | |
| April 2026 | Other theft | On or near Sports/Recreation Area | |
| April 2026 | Theft from the person | On or near Parking Area | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Rushby Mead | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Daisy Court | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Dunlin | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Rushby Mead | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near The Quadrant | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Rushby Mead | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Rushby Mead | |
| April 2026 | Violence and sexual offences | On or near Wymondley Road |
Methodology & Data Sources
Letchworth Garden City Crime Report
Data Sources & Processing
Every month, CrimeRate processes crime reports from data.police.uk, the UK's official provider of open crime report data. Each crime report includes anonymised coordinates, most often "snapped" to the middle of the nearest street, or to the nearest major landmark. The reports also include the month and year the crime was reported, as well as the type of crime.
Data releases on data.police.uk happen once a month, with a two-month delay. This means that, for example, crimes reported in Letchworth Garden City during July 2026 will typically become available in September 2026. The latest release is for Apr 2026 and was released in Jun 2026. To provide current and historical crime statistics, CrimeRate processed 61,669,232 crime reports for the latest release.
Letchworth Garden City Data Points
For Letchworth Garden City, CrimeRate uses the geographic boundaries provided by The Office for National Statistics in the December 2011 release of their Parishes dataset, using the PAR11CD column value E04004801.
Due to the 2021 Census being conducted during a UK-wide Coronavirus lockdown, the daytime population figures released so far cannot be relied on for purposes such as comparing crime rates. Instead, CrimeRate uses Letchworth Garden City's daytime - or "workday" - population of 33,462 from the ONS 2011 Census for calculations throughout the site.
All geographic boundaries use the full resolution - extent of the realm versions where provided to avoid missing crime reports near coastlines and rivers - the banks of the Thames in particular - that would otherwise not be included when using the clipped to the coastline datasets.
Calculating Crime Rates
CrimeRate locates the UK region, county, and town/city/village locality for each crime report, and calculates the crime rate by taking the sum of all crime reports, dividing it by the locality's daytime / "workday" population, and multiplying the result by 1,000 to get the crime rate per 1,000.
Crime Risk Score Calculations
CrimeRate calculates crime counts for local, nearby, and wider areas for every postcode in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The postcodes locations are deduplicated by a process that ensures distinct points are approximately 50 metres apart. This process removes the bias that would otherwise come from counting the same crimes several times in heavily populated areas.
Using a custom algorithm developed in-house, CrimeRate applies a crime severity weighting to each area's crime counts, based on the type of crime reported. This increases or decreases the crime count, or zeroes it out entirely, depending on the crime type. A separate crime severity rate is then calculated, standardised, and scaled to fit the crime risk score range of 1 to 1,000, with 1 being the lowest score, and 1,000 the highest.
Crime risk scores undergo further analysis per town, city, and village plus other areas including police forces and neighbourhoods. CrimeRate uses percentiles to work out the most common range of crime risk scores in each locality. This includes identifying the high and low bounds where approximately 68% of scores fall, and finding the median (50th percentile) for easy reference.
The crime types with a weight of zero are: Anti-Social Behaviour; Bicycle Theft; Other Crime; Other Theft; and Shoplifting. The highest weights to are assigned to Violence & Sexual Offences, and the lowest to Vehicle Crime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Crime in Letchworth Garden City