Yes, Blackfen is a safe area, and safer than the borough around it. Recorded crime runs about a fifth below the Bexley average. Violence makes up a smaller share of it than it does nationally. Car crime makes up a bigger share. Most of what goes wrong here happens on the driveway, and very little of it happens to people.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 2,961 crimes in Blackfen in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 64 per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 21% below the average for the London Borough of Bexley as a whole.
For the borough, the same measure comes out at about 81 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year, against Blackfen's 64. The gap is big enough to see on a map and small enough that Blackfen still has a crime figure worth reading.
Blackfen is fairly dense for a suburb, with about 6,300 people per square kilometre. About 3% of working-age residents are unemployed, and about 3% of households are overcrowded. That makes it a built-up suburb of full houses, with jobs to go to and rooms to spare.
Violence and sexual offences are the largest category in Blackfen, at 29% of recorded crime, though that is below the 35% share across England and Wales. The category is broad and includes common assault where nobody was hurt. Anti-social behaviour accounts for 20%, against 16% nationally, and vehicle crime for 10%, against 5%. Public order offences make up 7%, close to the national 7%, and criminal damage and arson about 7%, against 7% nationally. Shoplifting is 6% here, against 8% nationally. Every one of those interwar driveways is a shop window, and the people browsing it are not buying. The police publish a street-level crime map, and checking the roads around a house you like takes less time than a viewing.
Charging is a matter for the whole force, so these figures describe the Metropolitan Police and not Blackfen. The Met charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 33rd of 42 forces. In about 53% of its cases, the force closes the file without identifying a suspect. That tells you about the odds of getting a stolen catalytic converter back, which is a different question from the odds of having it stolen.
Safety is one of Blackfen's real strengths. A buyer here is more likely to lose sleep over a noisy neighbour than a break-in.