Farnham is safe enough, but it's the least tidy corner of a very tidy borough. Its crime rate runs about a quarter above the rest of Waverley. Most of the mix looks like anywhere else in England. Public order offences are the exception, and they come with the town centre. The castle view doesn't buy you a quieter Friday night.
In the year from June 2025 to May 2026, police recorded 1,662 crimes in Farnham, a published rate of 58 per 1,000 residents. That rate is roughly 26% above the average for the Waverley borough. That gap is the honest headline, and it's worth taking seriously rather than explaining away with talk of cobbles and independent shops.
The borough average itself is about 46 crimes per 1,000 residents. Put the two side by side, 58 against 46, and it's clear what the difference is. Farnham isn't dangerous by any sensible measure. It's being compared with a borough full of villages and commuter settlements where not much happens after dark, and next to them a market town with a working centre stands out.
That centre helps explain the texture. Farnham averages about 3,000 residents per square kilometre, which is town density rather than village density. Unemployment is around 2% and only about 2% of households are overcrowded. These are the figures of a comfortable town with a busy high street, not a struggling one, so the crime rate isn't coming from obvious hardship.
Broken down by type, the crime mostly mirrors the national pattern. Violence and sexual offences make up 35% of Farnham's recorded crime, the same as the 35% nationally. That category covers everything from serious assault to common assault without injury, and it's the biggest category almost everywhere. Anti-social behaviour accounts for 17%, against 16% nationally, and criminal damage and arson for 7%, level with the national 7%. Shoplifting runs at 9% against 8% nationally. The categories where Farnham stands out are public order offences, at about 11% against 7% nationally, and other theft, at 9% against 7%. That fits a town people come into for the evening, where a big night can end in an argument on the pavement rather than anyone's house being targeted.
What happens after a report is a separate question. Surrey Police, the force that covers Farnham, charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, over the year from June 2025 to May 2026. That figure is for the whole force, not for Farnham, and it measures what the police do after a crime rather than how likely one is. The more sobering figure is that about 36% of the force's cases closed with no suspect identified. If your bike disappears from outside a café, that figure is a more honest guide than the brochure.
Safety is Farnham's weak spot: not a place to fear, but clearly behind the quieter villages and towns of the borough around it, with the difference concentrated where people go out at night.