Bassingbourn is less safe than its surroundings, and the gap is real. Its crime rate runs about a quarter above the district's. Violence is a bigger share of what gets reported here than it is nationally. Car crime and theft are a smaller one. The worry is about trouble between people, and much less about anyone taking the car off the drive.
Police recorded 368 crimes in Bassingbourn in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 77 crimes per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 26% above the average for South Cambridgeshire. The rate is the published figure for the neighbourhood's statistical areas, so it uses its own population base, which is not the same as the headcount on the village sign.
For comparison, South Cambridgeshire as a whole records about 61 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year. With 77 against 61, Bassingbourn is clearly worse than the district around it.
None of the usual pressures stand out. The village averages about 1,090 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 2% and about 2% of households are overcrowded. Those are ordinary figures for a commuter village and do not explain the crime rate one way or the other. The rate is high for South Cambridgeshire, which is a quieter benchmark than most of England.
By category, violence and sexual offences made up about 48% of Bassingbourn's recorded crime against about 35% across England and Wales, and anti-social behaviour about 22% against 16%. Public order offences, at about 8% against 7%, and criminal damage and arson, at about 8% against 7%, are close to the national pattern. Other theft, at about 4% against 7%, and vehicle crime, at about 3% against 5%, run below it. Violence and sexual offences is a broad legal heading that includes common assault without injury, and with only 368 crimes in the year a few incidents can move any of these shares by several points. One bad year would explain much of it, and the next year could look different. Buyers who check the driveway lighting before anything else are guarding against the categories the village sees least.
The police.uk street map is worth reading over more than one year, and for the specific roads around any house you are considering, because a village-wide rate this size can come from a small number of places. Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the force covering Bassingbourn, charges a suspect in about 12% of cases, against about 12% nationally, putting it 19th of 42 forces. In about 36% of cases the force closes the investigation without identifying a suspect. Those are force-wide outcomes that cover the whole county, so they tell you what happens after a crime is reported, not how likely one is.
Bassingbourn is below average on safety. It records noticeably more crime than South Cambridgeshire, and the violence share is high enough that a buyer should look closely at the streets around any particular house.