Ingatestone is a safe place to live, and comfortably safer than the borough around it. Crime runs well under the local average. Unemployment barely registers. Overcrowding is rare. The most dangerous thing on the High Street is probably the open log fire at the Star Inn.
Police figures for the year from June 2025 to May 2026 put Ingatestone's crime rate at about 47 per 1,000 residents, roughly 38% below the average for Brentwood borough. That rate comes from 300 recorded crimes over those twelve months, a total small enough that one busy month shows up in the annual figure.
Brentwood borough as a whole recorded about 76 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year, against Ingatestone's 47. Brentwood is no crime hotspot either, so the village is coming in well under a borough that was already modest.
The numbers come from a well-off, settled part of Essex. Population density averages about 2,760 people per square kilometre across Ingatestone's neighbourhoods, unemployment is about 2%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. None of that explains a crime rate on its own, but it describes a place where most front doors belong to owners in work with room to spare.
The mix needs a careful reading, because 300 crimes is a small base and a handful of incidents can move any share by several points. Violence and sexual offences, a wide legal category that includes common assault without injury, made up about 35% of Ingatestone's recorded crime against about 35% nationally, which puts it exactly where it is almost everywhere. Vehicle crime came to about 13% against about 5% nationally, burglary about 7% against about 4%, shoplifting about 10% against 8%, other theft about 9% against 7%, and public order about 7%, level with the national 7%. Vehicle crime and burglary are the shares running ahead of the national pattern, and with about four in ten households running more than one car, the village gives thieves plenty of choice when they do visit. A year with a few fewer stolen cars would change that picture, so the useful check is the police.uk street-level crime map for the road being viewed, over several months, before deciding whether the driveway needs a gate.
Charging is handled by Essex Police across the whole county and is not a figure for Ingatestone itself. Over the same twelve months the force charged a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, and ranked 28th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 37% of cases closed with no suspect identified. That is the answer to whether a thief gets caught, which is a separate question from whether one turns up, and in Ingatestone the second question comes up a lot less often.
Safety is one of Ingatestone's real strengths. A buyer here is far more likely to worry about the price of the house than about what happens to it after dark.