Safest Places in the West Midlands 2020

The West Midlands region of England is home to over 5.7 million people living in the five counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. With safety being a top priority these days, NimbleFins has analysed data from police.uk in order to identify the safest places to live in the West Midlands.

Seventy-six post towns with populations greater than 3,000 residents were included in the study, which analysed both violent crime and property crime rates. Overall crime scores were adjusted for population size and ranged from 1,362 to 4,969, with a lower score indicating less crime in an area. For more information on how the crime scores were calculated, please see the Methodology section below.

5 Safest Places in the West Midlands

The safest five post towns in the West Midlands have an average crime score of 1,452, which is 57% lower than the average crime score of 3,349 in the West Midlands. Not surprisingly, small towns dominate the list of the top 5 safest places in the West Midlands.

1. Tenbury Wells

Just over 7,000 residents live in Tenbury Wells postcode WR15, which ranked as the safest post town in the West Midlands with an overall crime score of just 1,362 (59% lower than the West Midlands average of 3,349). In particular, Tenbury Wells stood out for an incredibly low property crime rate of just 917 crimes per 100,000 people which is equivalent to a rate of 0.9%. Property crimes include burglary, vehicle crimes, criminal damage & arson, bicycle theft and other theft.

Households in this area of Malvern Hills in Worcestershire earn an average of £40,281 per year. In the past year the West Mercia policing priorities have focused on reducing speeding in rural village locations such as Tenbury Wells.

2. Henley-in-Arden

The B95 Henley-in-Arden post code, which is home to 6,000 residents, ranked second safest in the West Midlands with an overall crime score of 1,383. Digging deeper into the data we found that Henley-in-Arden in Warwickshire actually has the lowest violent crime rate in the region with just 1,133 violent crimes per 100,000 people (which reflects violent crimes, robbery and theft from person). In fact the town's violent crime rate is 67% lower than the West Midland average.

However, the property crime rate in Henley-in-Arden is not as impressive, so households should take measures to protect their homes against burglaries and also watch out for vehicles crimes. In fact, local police priorities include patrols to deter burglary and vehicle crime offences in residential and rural areas. Households in Henley-in-Arden earn £48,721 per year on average, the highest out of the towns in the top 5 safest areas in the West Midlands.

3. Church Stretton

The SY6 post town of Church Stretton in Shropshire (which also covers Cardington) is home to over 7,000 residents. The area ranked 3rd in the West Midlands with an overall crime score of 1,417, which is 58% lower than the West Midlands average. Household incomes in the SY6 post town are £42,690 per year. Church Stretton falls within the West Mercia Police area, and local team priorities are county lines class A drug supply, child sexual exploitation, domestic abuse and acquisitive crime.

4. Broseley

Broseley (TF12 postcode) ranked 4th in terms of safety in the West Midlands with an overall crime score of 1,540. Police priorities have focused on reducing burglaries in the area in the past year. In Broseley, households earn an average of £40,800 each year.

5. Shipston-on-Stour

With just over 9,400 residents, the CV36 post town of Shipston-on-Stour in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire rounds out the top 5 safest places in the West Midlands. Average incomes in this relatively well-off area are close to £46,500 per year per household.

Population Breakdown

Even though we have adjusted the crime scores for population, it can be difficult to compare small villages to large cities. To account for this, we have classified the post towns into three categories by population size: small post towns with between 3,000 and 20,000 residents, mid-size post towns with between 20,000 and 50,000 residents and large post towns with over 50,000 residents. Here are our findings:

Safest Places in the West Midlands, According to Post Town Size

Full List of Places in the West Midlands

In the following table you can see the data for all 76 West Midland post towns that were included in our "Safest Places in the West Midlands" study of post towns with populations over 3,000. We've listed all 76 towns here from the most safe to the least safe according to our analysis. See below for more information on our methodology.

Methodology

To rank the post towns from most to least safe, we collected data reflecting crimes committed in the 12 months from May 2019 to April 2020 from police.uk via the UKCrimeStats website. We excluded post towns with fewer than 3,000 residents since areas with smaller populations are more sensitive to crime fluctuations. The raw data included both property crimes (burglary, vehicle crimes, criminal damage & arson, other theft and bike theft) and violent crimes (violent crimes, robbery and theft from person). In addition to impacting the safety you feel in one area vs. another, vehicle crimes can have an impact on the cost of your car insurance in the West Midlands.

Since the raw data was broken out by postcode district (e.g., CV1), we aggregated the data into post towns. For example, the post town of Coventry includes postcode districts CV1 to CV7. To account for different town sizes, we standardized the data to reflect property and violent crimes per 100,000 residents.

Next, we calculated an overall "crime score" by weighting violent crime at 80% and property crime at 20%, because we think violent crime is more alarming to residents. Finally, we ranked the cities based on their crime scores. Here are the 76 West Midlands Post Towns listed alphabetically, so you can find the crime scores for your town.