Forest Hill is a safe place to live by London standards, and it is noticeably safer than the borough it belongs to. Recorded crime runs well under the Lewisham average. Violence makes up a smaller share than it does nationally. What it has more of is trouble with parked cars and general nuisance. The worst thing likely to happen to most residents is a note on the windscreen that wasn't left by a warden.
Police.uk records 4,252 crimes in SE23 in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 89 per 1,000 residents. That puts Forest Hill more than a quarter below the Lewisham average over the same twelve months.
Across Lewisham as a whole the published rate for that year is about 122 per 1,000, against about 89 in Forest Hill. Buyers who cross the area off because "Lewisham" turns up near the top of a London crime table are reading the borough's total and missing the line for the hill.
Forest Hill is dense, with an average of about 9,700 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment in the area stands at about 4% and about 8% of households are overcrowded. That is the profile of a busy inner suburb of flats and terraces, and none of those figures is a cause of anything on its own. A place this crowded producing a rate this far under its borough's is the more interesting fact.
The mix is where Forest Hill parts company with the national picture. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury and is the largest almost everywhere, make up about 30% of crime here against about 35% across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour is about 21% here against 16% nationally, and vehicle crime about 11% against 5%. Criminal damage and arson, at about 6% against 7%, other theft at about 6% against 7%, and shoplifting at about 6% against 8% are all close to or under the national share. The hill's crime is weighted towards noise, nuisance and parked cars, and away from people. Anyone with a car on the street should look at the police.uk map for the exact road, because vehicle crime is the category most likely to differ from one street to the next.
What happens after a report is a separate question, answered for the whole force and not for Forest Hill. The Metropolitan Police Service charged a suspect in about 10% of cases in the year to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which places it 33rd of 42 forces. About 53% of its cases closed with no suspect identified. That is a measure of the Met across London, and it says nothing about how likely anything is to happen on this hill in the first place.
Forest Hill is one of the safer corners of Lewisham and a safe area by any reasonable London measure. The risk it does carry falls mostly on cars and on patience.