Kingston Bagpuize is a safe place to live, with crime running at about half the level of the district around it. Recorded crime is low. Joblessness is low. Overcrowding barely exists. The man who gave the village its surname helped William of Normandy invade England, and the place has been falling short of his standards ever since.
Thames Valley Police recorded 188 crimes across the area in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 30 per 1,000 residents. That puts Kingston Bagpuize roughly half below the Vale of White Horse as a whole, over the same twelve months.
The Vale of White Horse rate for the same year was about 58 crimes per 1,000 residents, against about 30 here. The district includes towns as well as villages, and the towns do most of the work of producing its number.
The area averages about 1,600 people per square kilometre, unemployment is about 2%, and about 1% of households are overcrowded. This is a village of owned family houses and people with jobs to go to. None of those figures explains the crime rate on its own, but they describe a place with little in it to attract a reputation.
The crime mix needs handling carefully, because with 188 crimes a year a few incidents can move any share by several points. Violence and sexual offences made up about 40% of recorded crime, against about 35% across England and Wales, a gap small enough to call broadly normal. That category covers everything from serious assault to common assault with no injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere. Burglary made up about 13% here against about 4% nationally, and public order about 12% against 7%. Anti-social behaviour, at about 11% against 16% nationally, is lower than the national share, and other theft and criminal damage both come to about 6% against about 7%. With this few crimes, the burglary share reflects a handful of incidents in one year and could look different the next. The police.uk crime map, searched for the streets around a particular house, shows whether those break-ins cluster anywhere near it.
What happens after a report is a question about the force. Thames Valley Police charges a suspect in about 9% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which places it 37th of 42 forces in England and Wales on that measure. About 37% of its cases close with no suspect identified. Both figures cover the whole force area over the year to May 2026 and say nothing about this village in particular. Crime here is rare. Getting someone charged for it is not much more common.
Safety is one of Kingston Bagpuize's real strengths. Crime is low by any local comparison, and the main risk worth weighing is the police's charge rate.