Hendon is less safe than the rest of Barnet, by a margin a buyer should notice. It records about 122 crimes per thousand people a year. That's roughly a quarter above the borough. Most of the excess is in cars, shop tills and anti-social behaviour, and violence makes up a smaller share than it does nationally. This is a place for locking up properly, though people here have little reason to fear for themselves.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 5,256 crimes in Hendon in the year to May 2026, and the published crime rate for the area over that year was about 122 per 1,000 residents. That puts Hendon roughly 26% above the average for the London Borough of Barnet. The rate is calculated on a statistical population of its own, so it's a published figure to quote as it stands. Dividing the count by Hendon's head count won't reproduce it. The police's own street-level crime map will show where incidents cluster around the exact road you're looking at, which matters more than any average for the area.
Across Barnet as a whole, the rate over the same year was about 97 crimes per 1,000 residents, against Hendon's 122. So Hendon has a higher figure than the borough it belongs to, though both numbers are still within the usual range for outer London.
Hendon is busy and tightly packed, with about 9,200 people per square kilometre on average. About 4% of residents were unemployed at the 2021 census, and about 11% of households were overcrowded. That describes the kind of area the crime figures come from, and none of it explains them on its own.
The mix of crime matters more than the total. Violence and sexual offences, the largest category almost everywhere and a broad legal grouping that includes common assault without injury, made up about 22% of Hendon's recorded crime, against about 35% across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour was about 21% against 16% nationally, and shoplifting about 13% against 8%. Vehicle crime was about 10% against 5%. Other theft ran at about 7%, level with the national share, and drugs offences at about 6% against 4%. Most of what lifts Hendon's total is aimed at cars, shops and public nuisance, and people are hurt less often than the headline rate suggests.
The Metropolitan Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, putting it 33rd of 42 forces in England and Wales over the year to May 2026. About 53% of its cases are closed with no suspect identified. Those are figures for the whole force across London, with nothing in them specific to Hendon, and they measure what happens after a crime, which is a separate question from how likely one is. For a broken car window, the most likely outcome is a crime reference number for the insurer.
Hendon is one of the less safe parts of its borough. The risk falls mainly on cars, shops and parked property, but it's high enough that a buyer should look at the specific street before deciding.