Where to Move for Peace of Mind

Understanding what makes each city safe helps you match the right location to your lifestyle.

Here is a closer look at the front runners.

Edinburgh combines low crime with a high quality of life.

The city ranks first in the UK for liveability in several independent surveys. Anti-social behaviour rates are well below the Scottish average. The Edinburgh and Lothians policing area recorded a 6% fall in total crimes in the most recent annual period.

York is routinely cited as one of the safest places to live in England.

The city centre is compact and walkable. North Yorkshire Police consistently report below-average crime across all categories. Property crime is particularly low, which matters if you are moving with valuables.

Exeter benefits from a large student population and a well-resourced local police presence.

Devon and Cornwall Police recorded violent crime rates around 30% below the England and Wales average. The city also scores highly for employment and green space, two factors strongly linked to community wellbeing.

Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex with one of the lowest crime rates in southern England.

Its small size means community ties are strong. Sussex Police data shows it outperforms national averages across burglary, robbery, and vehicle crime.

Winchester in Hampshire combines historical character with genuine safety credentials.

Hampshire Constabulary records put it among the top five lowest-crime cities in England consistently.

Truro, as Cornwall's only city, is small but punches above its weight for safety.

Remote geography helps; Cornwall as a whole records low rates of serious violence.

UK crime data comes from two main sources, and understanding both gives a more complete picture.

Police-recorded crime is collected by the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, plus Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

It captures crimes that are reported to and recorded by police. This means it misses unreported crime, which research consistently shows is significant, particularly for domestic abuse and sexual offences.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) takes a different approach.

It interviews around 35,000 households each year and asks about their direct experience of crime, regardless of whether they reported it. This captures the so-called dark figure of unreported crime. For personal and household crime, the CSEW provides a more accurate picture of actual victimisation.

When comparing cities using safe cities UK data, most public tools draw on police-recorded crime because postcode-level survey data does not exist.

This means cities where people are more likely to report crime may appear worse than they are, while under-reporting skews figures lower in areas where trust in police is lower.

For practical purposes, looking at trends over time is more reliable than point-in-time comparisons.

A city that has shown a consistent five-year decline in recorded crime, such as Edinburgh or York, is making genuine progress on public safety.

It is also worth knowing that England and Wales saw a 10% fall in total police-recorded crime in the 12 months to March 2024, driven largely by falls in fraud and computer misuse.

Violent crime fell by 5% in the same period. The overall direction of travel for most UK cities is positive.