Denham has more crime than a village with a conservation area and a golf club is supposed to have. The published rate is about 94 crimes for every 1,000 residents. That is well above the rest of Buckinghamshire. Unemployment is low, and so is overcrowding. Thefts from cars and damage make up more of the total than they do nationally. Whatever the village looks like, the crime rate puts it in the poor column for safety.
Thames Valley Police recorded 370 crimes in Denham in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 94 per 1,000 people. That is roughly 44% above the Buckinghamshire average for the same twelve months. The village isn't large, and a parish this size still produces enough crime reports for the gap to show.
Put the two figures next to each other. Across Buckinghamshire the rate was about 65 crimes per 1,000 people over the same year, and Denham's was about 94. Most buyers will look at a village with listed buildings and assume the gap runs the other way.
The usual explanations don't fit Denham well. Unemployment is about 2%, about 4% of households are overcrowded, and density averages about 1,900 people per square kilometre, which is suburban, not inner-city. None of those figures causes crime, and none of them points to an area under pressure. Whatever pushes Denham's number up, it isn't hardship on the doorstep.
The mix of offences is unusual. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault with no injury, made up about 28% of Denham's recorded crime, below the 35% share across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour was about 12% against 16% nationally. Vehicle crime was the one that stood out, at about 11% against 5%. Criminal damage and arson came to about 11% against 7%, other theft about 9% against 7%, and public order about 8% against 7%. With a total this small, a handful of incidents can move any of those shares by several points. So this year's mix is a pattern worth noticing, but it may not last. For now, more of Denham's crime involves things left outside than the national pattern would suggest. Look up the police's street-level crime map for the exact road you are considering. Twelve months of pins on one street tell you more than any village average.
After a crime is reported, Thames Valley Police charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally. That puts it 37th of 42 forces. About 37% of the force's cases are closed with no suspect identified. Those are force-wide figures covering a large area, so they say nothing about Denham's streets in particular. They measure what happens after the crime, not how likely it is in the first place.
Denham has a poor safety record by Buckinghamshire standards, and the village's looks don't change that. Lock the car and check the street. The pretty part of the village is part of the same crime figure.