Melbourn is safe, and safer than the district around it. Recorded crime is below the South Cambridgeshire average. Almost nobody is out of work and almost nobody lives in a cramped home. A bit more of the crime here is aimed at property than the national mix would suggest. It has a village's crime profile, with fewer incidents and more of them involving things than people.
Police figures for the Melbourn area give a rate of about 54 crimes per 1,000 residents in the year to May 2026, roughly 13% below the South Cambridgeshire average. That came to 524 recorded crimes across the Melbourn area, which takes in Meldreth, Shepreth and Fowlmere, over the same twelve months. The rate is a published figure worked out on its own population base, so it won't match a sum done with the village's head count.
Across South Cambridgeshire as a whole the rate was about 61 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same year, against roughly 54 here. South Cambridgeshire is mostly villages, so Melbourn is beating an average that was low to begin with.
The Melbourn area is fairly spread out, at about 2,000 people per square kilometre on average across its neighbourhoods. Unemployment was about 2% at the 2021 Census, and about 2% of households were overcrowded. Those numbers describe the kind of place this is. They don't explain the crime rate, and they shouldn't be read as the reason for it.
The mix leans a little towards property. Violence and sexual offences made up about 40% of recorded crime in the year to May 2026, against about 35% nationally. That is the biggest category almost everywhere, and it covers a wide legal range down to common assault where nobody was hurt. Anti-social behaviour was about 17%, close to the national 16%. Criminal damage and arson came to about 10% against 7%, public order about 8% against 7%, vehicle crime about 7% against 5%, and burglary about 6% against 4%. Each runs a couple of points above the national share, so a buyer here is more likely to have the car or the windows targeted than to meet trouble in the street. The police.uk crime map shows recorded incidents near any address month by month, and a few months of it around a particular house tells you more than any village total.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the force covering Melbourn, charged a suspect in about 12% of cases over the same year, against about 12% nationally, putting it 19th of 42 forces. About 36% of its cases were closed with no suspect identified. Those are force-wide figures, decided across the whole county. They show what happens after a crime is reported, which is a separate question from how much crime there is. Being exactly average at charging people isn't something any force puts on a recruitment poster.
Melbourn is safe: it has less crime than a quiet district and a mix that leans towards damage to property. The main risks are to cars and windows, and very little of it involves violence in the street.