Yes, North Weald Bassett is one of the safer parts of Epping Forest district. Crime runs about a quarter below the district average. Unemployment is low. Overcrowding barely registers. The police figures read like a village that goes to bed on time.
Police recorded 391 crimes across North Weald Bassett in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 57 crimes per 1,000 residents. That rate is roughly 25% below the Epping Forest district average for the same twelve months.
Side by side, the gap is easy to see. The village records about 57 crimes per 1,000 residents and Epping Forest district as a whole records about 76. The district includes larger, busier towns, and North Weald comes out of the comparison well.
The neighbourhood behind those numbers is fairly settled. Population density averages about 2,300 people per square kilometre across the village's statistical areas. Unemployment was about 2% and overcrowding affected about 3% of households at the 2021 census. Those figures describe the kind of place this is. They do not explain the crime rate on their own, and no single one of them causes it.
The crime mix needs handling with care, because the totals are small enough that a few incidents can move a share by several points. Violence and sexual offences make up about 39% of local crime against about 35% nationally. That is the largest category almost everywhere, and it covers a wide legal range, including common assault where nobody was hurt. Vehicle crime is about 11% here against 5% nationally. Anti-social behaviour is lower, at about 11% against 16%. Public order offences and criminal damage each make up about 9%, against about 7% nationally, and other theft about 6% against 7%. With totals this small, the mix could look quite different next year. For now, the one share well above the national figure is about cars, and a parish this dependent on driving gives thieves plenty of them to look at.
The charge rate answers a different question, about what happens after a crime is reported. It does not tell you how safe the area is. Essex Police charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 28th of 42 forces. About 37% of its cases are closed with no suspect identified. Those are force-wide figures for the whole of Essex, set by how the force works rather than by anything in the village. "Low crime" is the area's own result. The clear-up figures come from the county force, and it has its own catching up to do.
On the police's own numbers, safety is one of North Weald Bassett's real strengths. Residents here are far more likely to be bothered by the motorway than by crime.