Yes, Hoo St Werburgh is one of the calmer corners of Medway. Crime runs about a quarter below the Medway rate. Nuisance fills more of the log than it does nationally. Kent Police charges suspects more often than most forces. Safe is the right word here. Silent is not.
Police data for the year from June 2025 to May 2026 puts Hoo St Werburgh at 77 recorded crimes per 1,000 residents, from 919 crimes in total. That published rate sits about 28% below the Medway average. The rate and the count are published on different population bases, so the one should not be worked back from the other.
Put the two rates side by side and the gap is easier to see: 77 per 1,000 here, against about 108 per 1,000 across Medway as a whole. Buyers leaving Chatham or Gillingham for the peninsula are, on this measure, trading down on crime as well as up on garden size. The residents who describe the village as "going downhill" have not looked at the town they drive through to get home.
The area around the numbers is suburban rather than rural, at about 4,030 residents per square kilometre on average. Unemployment is 2% and 3% of households are overcrowded, both low. This is a settled, working, mostly owner-occupied place. The figures describe what the neighbourhood is like. They do not explain its crime rate, and they should not be read as though they do.
The crime mix leans towards the irritating rather than the frightening. Violence and sexual offences make up 42% of recorded crime, against 35% nationally. That is the biggest category almost everywhere, and it covers a wide legal range, including common assault with no injury, so the local share is a few points above the national one rather than something alarming. Anti-social behaviour is the category that stands out, at 26% here against 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson account for 9% against 7% nationally. Other theft is 6% against 7%, and vehicle crime 4% against 5%, both slightly below national shares. In a village with low overall crime, the reports that do come in are more often about behaviour than about burglary. That makes the local group chat louder than the crime rate deserves.
After a report, charging is decided force-wide, so the figure belongs to the force and not the village. Kent Police charged a suspect in about 16% of cases over the same year, against about 12% nationally, putting it sixth of 42 forces in England and Wales. In about 36% of cases the investigation closed with no suspect identified. That is the honest answer to "will they catch them", and it answers a different question from how safe the streets are.
Safety is one of Hoo St Werburgh's real strengths. The crime that does happen here is more nuisance than threat, and the overall rate sits well below the towns across the river.