England and Wales · local-authority comparison

Burglary Rates by Local Authority

Compare published burglary records and resident rates across consistent local-authority boundaries in England and Wales.

What is counted?

Burglary records cover unlawful entry, or entry as a trespasser, where the source assigns the incident to the burglary group. They are not a count of convictions and do not include every theft from a property.

What can shape this particular ranking?

Burglary exposure is tied more closely to homes and premises than to resident headcount alone. A fair local reading should consider the number and type of households, vacant properties, commercial premises and changes in security or reporting. Compare the authority rate with its own earlier completed periods before treating one national rank as a persistent pattern.

The ranking is being refreshed

This evidence page waits for complete authority totals and denominators rather than publishing a partial table.

Three checks before comparing

  1. Use the same measure

    Count describes published volume. Rate adjusts for resident population. Neither is a personal risk score.

  2. Keep the source period fixed

    Every row above uses the same completed 12-month window. Do not compare it with a monthly map total.

  3. Check what is missing

    Unreported incidents are absent. Greater Manchester is removed, not ranked at zero, because its force does not supply this dataset.

How this burglary table is calculated

1. Fix the geography

Complete official LSOAs are assigned to their named local authority. Informal city labels and postcode shapes are not mixed into the table.

2. Count one category

Only records published in the Burglary group are counted. Other theft or violence groups do not enter this numerator.

3. Attach one denominator

The resident rate equals published records divided by the matched ONS population estimate, multiplied by 1,000. Counts remain visible because visitors and commuters are not residents.

4. Remove incomplete coverage

All ten Greater Manchester authorities are excluded before ranking because their force has not supplied this dataset since July 2019. They are not assigned a zero.

What this ranking cannot answer

  • It cannot count incidents that were never reported or recorded.
  • It cannot identify a victim, suspect, defendant or conviction.
  • It cannot turn an anonymised map coordinate into an exact address.
  • It cannot predict an individual's future risk in either authority.

Use the figures as a reproducible area comparison, then check local land use, transport, retail activity, visitor footfall and recording practice before explaining a difference.