A UK postcode has two halves. The first half is the postcode district - for
example E8, M4, or LS2. CrimeMapsUK publishes a page for many of those
districts under crime by postcode district, with monthly
totals, top categories, and a year-by-year view built from published police
records.
This article explains what those pages measure, how records get assigned to a district, and what they cannot tell you.
What a district page is for
A district page is a middle layer between a whole police force area and a single postcode report:
- force pages are large (often a city-region or several counties)
- a neighbourhood report covers a fixed 0.5 km circle around one exact postcode
- a district page covers the outward-code area, which is still wide, but much smaller than a force
Use a district page when you want a quick sense of published volumes and mix for a named code. Use a report when you care about one address and where records cluster around it.
How records are assigned to a district
Published street-crime records do not include a postcode. They include an approximate map point, snapped to an anonymous location before release.
To build district totals, CrimeMapsUK assigns each point to the district of its nearest postcode centroid, using open postcode data from the ONS Postcode Directory. Points more than a few kilometres from any postcode are left unassigned (for example at sea).
That method is practical and rebuildable. It is not the same as knowing the true address of every incident.
Limits to keep in mind
Boundary edges are fuzzy. Near the line between two districts, the nearest centroid can tip a point either way. Treat counts near boundaries as indicative, not exact.
Locations are approximate. Several incidents can share one published point. District totals inherit that fuzziness.
These are published records, not all crime. Reporting, recording, and publication all filter what appears. A quiet month can mean less publishing as well as fewer incidents.
Some districts have no page. Districts with very little recent volume, or districts inside a force publication gap, are left off the index. A page built on paused data would look like the area “went quiet”, which can be false. See the methodology page for the same rule in more detail.
How to read the figures
On a typical district page you will see:
- totals for the last twelve published months
- the latest month
- change versus the previous twelve months, when enough history exists
- the largest crime categories in that window
- calendar-year totals for recent years
None of those is a safety score. Two districts with similar totals can have very different mixes (for example retail theft versus residential burglary). Read the category table before drawing conclusions.