Ilford is noticeably less safe than the rest of its own borough. Crime runs well above the Redbridge average. Theft from the person and anti-social behaviour carry most of the extra. Violence is a smaller share than across England and Wales. The worry here is losing your bag or your patience, more than your safety.
Police.uk's published figures put recorded crime across Ilford at about 138 offences per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, roughly 38% above the Redbridge average. That rate covers 11,218 recorded crimes over the same twelve months. It is a published rate, built on its own statistical population base, and it covers the whole area, from the town centre to the residential streets of Cranbrook and Loxford.
Redbridge as a whole runs at about 100 offences per 1,000 residents, so the two numbers side by side are about 138 here against about 100 across the borough. Ilford's figure is high for Redbridge, and it gets most of its notice from being set against neighbours with a lot less going on. Police.uk maps reported crime street by street, month by month, so look up the street itself and a few months either side of the date you viewed it, because the town figure covers a busy high street and a lot of terraces that never see it.
Ilford is a dense place. The average neighbourhood holds about 16,900 people per square kilometre, about 22% of households are overcrowded, and unemployment is about 4%. Those numbers describe the place, a busy, packed, working town, and none of them on its own tells you who commits a crime or why.
The mix matters more than the total. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury and is the biggest one almost everywhere, make up about 29% of Ilford's recorded crime against about 35% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is about 22% here against 16% nationally. Theft from the person accounts for about 7% against about 2% nationally, and vehicle crime about 7% against 5%. Other theft (7% here, 7% nationally) and public order offences (about 6% against 7%) are close to the national shares. In 1922 Ilford made national news with the Thompson-Bywaters case, which went on to shape the debate over hanging. These days the extra crime is mostly snatched phones and street nuisance.
What happens after a report is a separate question from how often crime happens. The Metropolitan Police Service charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, over the year to May 2026, which puts it 33rd of 42 forces. In about 53% of its cases nobody is identified at all. Those are force figures for the whole of London and tell you nothing about Ilford's streets in particular. They are, though, the odds you face if you ever need to report a theft here.
On safety, Ilford is below par, mostly because of what goes missing in the town centre and not because of violence. Buyers who can live with that get the trains and the schools.