Yes, to the point where the statistics stop being interesting. Eighty-four recorded crimes across a whole year, for the entire area. A rate sitting nearly sixty percent below the district average. The force covering it ranks last of all forty-two in England and Wales for charging anyone. Safety here is not a claim anybody had to work for. It is what happens when there are more scheduled monuments than there are people out after ten.
Police recorded 84 crimes across the area in the twelve months to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 31 per thousand residents. That rate comes from the police's own statistical areas rather than from dividing the count by the resident headcount, so the two figures sit side by side rather than one producing the other. There is no published breakdown of what those 84 offences actually were, which means anyone telling you the town's crime is mostly one particular thing is guessing at your expense.
The comparison is where it lands. Across North Devon as a whole the rate runs at roughly 73 recorded crimes per thousand residents over the same period. Here it is about 31. Both numbers describe the same twelve months and the same recording standards, and the gap of roughly 58% below the district average is the single most flattering figure attached to this town.
The neighbourhood texture behind that is about what the map suggests. Population density averages around 930 people per square kilometre across the area's small statistical areas, a figure that describes the built-up terraces rather than the moor around them. Unemployment sits at about 2%. Overcrowded households account for half of one percent of the total. None of those numbers causes the crime figure, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a theory rather than reading a dataset. They do describe a place where very little is under pressure.
The less comfortable half of the picture is what happens after somebody reports something. Devon and Cornwall Police, the force covering this area, charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against roughly 12% nationally. Around 26% of cases closed with nobody identified at all. The force ranks 42nd out of 42 on that charge rate. This answers a completely different question from the crime rate and the two should never be blended: your odds of something happening are low, and your odds of anyone being charged for it if it does are lower than the national average. Rural forces cover enormous distances with finite people, and the outcome data is honest enough about that even when the press release is not.
Safety is the strongest thing this town has going for it, and by a distance that no amount of caveating about charge rates undoes. Whatever else you weigh up before buying here, this is not the column that will worry you.