Yes. Chipping Ongar is one of the safer parts of its district, with clearly less crime per head than Epping Forest as a whole. Unemployment is low. Hardly anyone lives in an overcrowded home. Most residents never see enough crime to have an opinion about it.
Police records for the Chipping Ongar area show 533 crimes in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 56 per 1,000 residents. That rate comes from the police's own population base for these neighbourhoods, so it shouldn't be checked by dividing the count by any other population figure. For a buyer, the number to remember is the rate.
Across the whole of Epping Forest district, the published rate over the same twelve months was about 76 crimes per 1,000 residents. Ongar's 56 is noticeably lower. Whatever pushes the district figure up mostly happens closer to London.
Ongar and the villages around it, High Ongar, Shelley, Moreton and Bobbingworth, average about 2,040 people per square kilometre, a figure stretched across a lot of farmland. Unemployment at the 2021 census was about 2%, and about 3% of households were overcrowded. It is a town of owner-occupied houses with fields at the back, and the numbers look like it.
Violence and sexual offences make up about 44% of recorded crime here, against about 35% across England and Wales. That is the largest category almost everywhere, and the legal definition is wide, running from serious assault down to common assault with no injury, so a share in a low-crime area means a larger slice of a smaller total. Anti-social behaviour is about 9% here against 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson make up about 9% (7% nationally), other theft about 8% (7%), and public order about 6% (7%), all close to the national pattern. Vehicle crime runs at about 8% against 5% nationally. That fits a town where about half of working residents drive to work and most driveways have something on them. For one street in particular, the police.uk street map shows the past year's reports around a postcode, which gives a better picture than any area average.
Charging is decided across the whole of Essex Police, so it describes the force and doesn't measure how safe Ongar is. Essex Police charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 28th of 42 forces in England and Wales in the year to May 2026. About 37% of its cases close with no suspect identified. The same force once turned down residents' requests for a lower speed limit on the A414 towards the Four Wantz roundabout, because its traffic officer judged that drivers simply wouldn't obey it. It is a force with no illusions about what people will do.
Safety is the thing Chipping Ongar does best. It has less crime than the district around it, and what crime there is mostly matches the national mix.