Yes, and the margin is not subtle. Recorded crime runs about 60% below the North Devon average. Fewer than two hundred offences across a full year. Almost nobody here is out of work or living on top of anyone else. Safety is the least complicated thing about this village, which is why the online arguments about it tend to be over dog mess and parked vans.
The published police.uk figures for the neighbourhood areas covering Fremington put recorded crime at about 29 offences per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, from 194 offences in total. That rate is calculated against the population of the statistical areas the police report on, so it is not the count divided by the number of people who live in the village, and the two should not be reconciled by hand.
The comparison is what gives it weight. North Devon as a whole ran at about 73 offences per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months. Fremington sits at about 29, roughly 60% below the district it belongs to, and the district itself is not a byword for lawlessness.
The texture behind those numbers is ordinary and worth stating without pretending it explains them. The neighbourhood areas here average about 2,300 people per square kilometre, which is a properly built-up village rather than a scatter of farms. Unemployment runs at about 2% and about 2% of households are overcrowded. None of that causes a crime rate on its own, but it does describe the kind of place producing these figures.
The mix needs handling carefully, because 194 offences spread across 13 categories is a small base, and a handful of incidents moves any share by several points. On that basis, violence and sexual offences accounted for about 55% of recorded crime locally against about 35% nationally, and that is a broad statutory grouping covering everything from serious assault to common assault without injury, which is why it tops the table almost everywhere. Burglary came in at about 8% locally against about 4% nationally. Anti-social behaviour was about 11% here against about 16% nationally. Other theft, at about 7% locally and 7% nationally, and criminal damage and arson, about 7% against about 7%, are effectively indistinguishable from the national pattern. Vehicle crime ran about 3% locally against about 5% nationally. Read as proportions of a small total, none of this is a settled characteristic of the place, and a single busy month would rewrite the ordering.
What happens after a report is a separate question, answered by the force rather than the village. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd of 42 forces on that measure. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified. That says nothing about how safe Fremington is and everything about what to expect if something does happen: reporting it is not the same as anyone being caught, and the force you would be dealing with charges at a lower rate than most.
Safety is the clearest strength this village has, low in volume and low relative to everything around it, with the honest caveat that the odds of a resolution afterwards sit at the wrong end of the national table.