Goffs Oak is safe, and comfortably so for Broxbourne. Crime runs about a third below the borough rate. Hardly anyone is out of work. Overcrowding barely registers. The loudest alarm the village ever had was a civil defence siren that was only sounded for tests.
Hertfordshire Constabulary recorded 337 crimes in Goffs Oak in the year to May 2026, which the published figures put at a rate of about 67 per 1,000 residents. That is about 32% below the average for Broxbourne. In a village this size, a few hundred crimes a year is the normal background of a place where people live.
To put the two numbers side by side, the borough-wide rate for Broxbourne over the same year was about 98 crimes per 1,000 residents, against about 67 in Goffs Oak. Crime in Broxbourne is being recorded somewhere, and on these figures it mostly isn't on the lanes around the village.
Goffs Oak averages about 2,000 people per square kilometre, which is spread out for the borough's commuter belt. About 2% of working-age residents are unemployed and about 2% of households are overcrowded. The village is built of owned family houses with space round them, and the crime figures look like that kind of place.
The mix needs care, because 337 crimes is a small enough total that a handful of incidents can move a share by several points. Violence and sexual offences make up about 36% of the total, almost exactly the national 35%. That category is the largest almost everywhere and includes common assault where nobody was injured. Anti-social behaviour runs higher than the national picture, at about 23% against 16%, and vehicle crime at about 8% against 5%. With most households running two cars or more, thieves have plenty parked outside to choose from. Criminal damage and arson are level with the national share at about 7%. Shoplifting is about 6% against 8% nationally and other theft about 5% against 7%, which is easy to manage in a village with not many shops to steal from. A year's figures this small will rearrange themselves, and the police's month-by-month map for the streets around a particular house is the useful check on what happens near it.
Once a crime is reported, Hertfordshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 11% of cases across the force, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 23rd of 42 forces. About 40% of its cases close with no suspect identified. That is a county-wide measure of what happens after a report. It answers whether someone gets caught and says nothing about how likely a crime is in Goffs Oak.
Goffs Oak is one of the safest places a buyer can pick in Broxbourne, and what crime it does have is mostly the minor kind that happens near anywhere people park their cars.