Gamlingay is a safe place to live, comfortably so. Recorded crime here is about a third lower than across the wider district. Hardly anyone is out of work. Hardly anyone lives in an overcrowded home. The police know where the village is, and they don't have to come very often.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary recorded 196 crimes in Gamlingay in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 39 per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 36% below the South Cambridgeshire average. Gamlingay Wood, Cinques Common and a conservation area of old timber-framed houses make up much of the village, and none of them gives the police much paperwork.
Put the two figures side by side and the gap is clear: about 39 crimes per 1,000 residents in Gamlingay, against about 61 for South Cambridgeshire as a whole over the same year. The district figure includes busier places than this village, and the village comes out well below it. The national police crime map shows street-level reports, so a buyer can check the actual postcode against those district averages.
The census picture shows the kind of place this is. Average density across Gamlingay's statistical areas is about 2,080 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 2% and overcrowding is about 2%. Those figures describe the village. None of them explains its crime figure, and reading them as a cause would go further than the evidence does.
Violence and sexual offences make up about 37% of Gamlingay's recorded crime, close to the 35% share nationally. That category is the largest almost everywhere and includes common assault where nobody was hurt. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 22% here against 16% nationally, criminal damage and arson about 10% against 7%, vehicle crime about 9% against 5%, burglary about 7% against 4%, and other theft about 6% against 7%. The total is small, though. With 196 crimes in a year, a few incidents can shift any of those shares by several points. One run of vandalised car mirrors would be enough to change how the mix looks.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how much crime there is, and the answer comes from the whole force. Cambridgeshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 12% of cases, much the same as the national figure of about 12%, and ranks 19th of 42 forces on that measure. About 36% of its cases are closed without a suspect being identified. That tells you what to expect if something does happen, which is a less cheerful figure than the crime rate.
Gamlingay is one of the safer places a buyer could choose in the district. Its crime rate sits well below South Cambridgeshire's, and safety is one of its strongest points.