Cranleigh is safe, but not as safe as the house prices suggest. Crime runs slightly below the borough average. Hardly anyone is out of work. Overcrowding barely exists. The price tag says gated estate, but the crime figures describe an ordinary Surrey village.
Police.uk recorded 602 crimes in Cranleigh in the year to May 2026. The published rate is about 44 crimes per 1,000 people, roughly 4% below the Waverley average for the same period. That's a small gap. A handful of incidents either way could close it, so it's better read as level with the borough than as a win over it.
The Waverley rate for the same year is about 46 crimes per 1,000 people, against Cranleigh's 44. The two figures sit close together. Buyers who moved out of a town expecting the village to be a different world tend to be the ones most surprised by the police log.
Cranleigh doesn't look like a place with a crime problem. There are about 2,600 people per square kilometre on average across its neighbourhoods, unemployment is about 2%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. That is a settled, well-housed village with a High Street, a few pubs and shops that close at a sensible hour. Crime here is what any village of this size and this much money generates, not the sign of anything structural.
The mix mostly tracks the national one. Violence and sexual offences make up about 40% of recorded crime in Cranleigh, against about 35% nationally. It's the biggest category almost everywhere, and it covers a wide legal range that includes common assault without injury. Anti-social behaviour is about 14% here against 16% nationally, and public order offences about 9% against 7%. Criminal damage and arson is about 8% against 7%, shoplifting about 7% against 8%, and other theft about 6% against 7%. Nothing stands out. The public order share is a touch higher than average, which fits a village centre with pubs and a Saturday night, and not much else.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is, and the answer comes from the force, not the village. Surrey Police charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 30th of 42 forces on that measure. About 36% of its cases close with no suspect identified. The chance of a stolen bike being returned by a detective is about what you'd expect anywhere in England, so lock it up.
Cranleigh is middling for safety: comfortably ordinary, level with the rest of Waverley, and no quieter than its reputation would have you believe. It's a sensible place to live, not a sanctuary.