Hemel Hempstead is a likeable, practical new town carrying a crime rate of about 104 offences per 1,000 people, and that number deserves more of a buyer's attention than the parks or the price. The rest of the town mostly pulls its weight. Green space starts at the end of nearly every road. The schools hold up. The houses cost what a Hertfordshire buyer would hope and rarely gets. The trade is decent, as long as the crime figure is part of it from the first viewing.
Hertfordshire Constabulary's records give Hemel a published rate of about 104 crimes per 1,000 people in the year to May 2026, roughly 16% above the Dacorum average of about 90. The mix leans towards nuisance more than menace. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 24% of recorded crime here, against about 16% across England and Wales, while violence and sexual offences, the broad legal grouping that tops the list almost everywhere, comes in slightly below its national share. The force charges someone in about 11% of cases, a little under the national 12%, and that is a figure for the whole of Hertfordshire. The town-wide rate averages a busy shopping parade and a sleepy close in Felden into the same number, which flatters one and slanders the other.
For anyone planning to change a house, Hemel is easier than its history suggests. The wider area around the town holds 244 listed buildings, two of them Grade I and 18 Grade II*, plus eight conservation areas, among them Hemel Hempstead Old Town, Piccotts End, Water End and Winkwell. Those are where window frames and extensions need permission and patience. Almost everything else went up after the government designated Hemel a New Town in 1947, and nobody has drawn a conservation area round a Grovehill cul-de-sac yet, which is good news for anyone with loft-conversion plans.
The trains are there for anyone who wants them. Hemel Hempstead Rail Station, out at Boxmoor on the West Coast Main Line, runs to London Euston, and Apsley and Kings Langley stations are close by. Hardly anyone uses them for work. At the 2021 census, 2% of working residents went by train, 48% drove and 34% worked from home. The bus network has 401 stops, averaging about 29 weekday departures each but fewer than two an hour at the peak. Gigabit broadband reaches about 90% of premises and superfast about 98%. The M1 and M25 are both close at hand, and the commuting figures show where the town put its money.
Flood risk depends entirely on which map gets read. About 14% of postcodes are at high risk on at least one flood indicator, surface water included, and another 14% at medium risk. On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, only about 1% of postcodes fall in Zone 3 and about 1% in Zone 2, and none have a recorded history of flooding. The Gade and the Bulbourne behave themselves. Heavy rain is the bigger problem here.
About 58% of households own their home, the median age is about 39, and the Office for National Statistics models gross household income at about £63,800 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the town's areas. That is a working, mid-life, mortgage-paying town, built for families leaving London after the war and still mostly full of them.
The Land Registry recorded 852 sales in the year to late May 2026 at a median of £410,000. Flats went for about £240,000, terraced houses about £400,000, semis about £490,000 and detached houses about £685,000. Band C is the most common council tax band, and about 17% of homes are in Bands A or B. Renting across Dacorum as a whole runs to about £1,580 a month, the Office for National Statistics' average private rent for April 2026, so Hemel's own streets may come in under or over it.
The valuation list describes a town of terraces and flats. About 36% of homes are terraced, 28% are flats, 17% are semis, 14% are detached and 3% are bungalows, and only about 9% predate 1930. The energy ratings follow the age of the stock. About 61% of certificated homes are rated A to C and about 8% E or worse. Most homes, about 78%, are on mains gas, while about 10% rely on electric heating alone, a running cost to ask about at a flat viewing. Post-war housing is plain, and plain houses are cheap to heat.
Primary pupils across the town's postcode districts average about 104 in Key Stage 2 maths, across 32 schools. The six secondary schools average an Attainment 8 score of about 43. Those secondaries include The Hemel Hempstead School, Longdean School, The Adeyfield Academy and The Astley Cooper School. Ofsted grades 203 of 227 inspected settings good or better, but that count covers the whole of Hertfordshire, so it says more about the county than about any particular school gate in Hemel.
The surroundings are the town's best argument. On average the nearest green space is about 150 metres from home, with about 22 within a kilometre, and water is roughly 630 metres away, whether that is the Grand Union Canal, the rivers or Hemel Water Gardens. Gadebridge Park runs up the valley from the Old Town, and the Box Moor Trust still looks after the moorland that locals bought in 1581 to stop it being fenced off. That small band of 16th-century objectors did more for Hemel's quality of life than any post-war masterplan managed.
Sir Astley Cooper is the name the town keeps coming back to. The surgeon built Gadebridge House in 1811, and in 1827 he turned a cottage at Piccotts End into a cottage hospital giving free medical care. In 1953 the same building turned out to hold unusually fine medieval wall paintings. His grounds later became the Gadebridge estate, and a secondary school carries his name, so few men have ever had a 1960s housing development built on their lawn and been thanked for it. John Dickinson's company ran factories at Nash Mills, part of the papermaking trade that made Apsley.
Hemel works for the driver with children and a budget that stops before half a million, who wants a semi in Adeyfield, Chaulden or Boxmoor, a garden, and fields within a short walk. It also works for anyone who works from home and wants the countryside around Great Gaddesden and Nettleden without paying village prices. Anyone who wants a walkable period town, or a crime figure that never comes up at dinner, will be happier looking elsewhere, though Bourne End and the Old Town get close to the first.
The crime rate is real, and the town-wide average won't tell a buyer which street brings it in, so the trade comes down to what a family gets for £410,000 with a park at the bottom of the road. Hemel Hempstead is an ordinary town, and most of what makes it worth living in is the open land the planners left around it.