Northwood is a safe area, and its crime rate is about half the borough's. Violence turns up less here than the national mix would suggest. What crime there is goes after things more than people. Cars, homes and shop shelves get the attention, and residents mostly do not.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 1,941 crimes in Northwood in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, a published rate of about 68 per 1,000 residents and close to half below the Hillingdon average. That is a full twelve months, long enough that one bad month cannot drag the picture around. Northwood has been inside the Metropolitan Police District since 1840, back when there was barely enough of the place to need a constable.
Put the two numbers side by side and the gap is plain. Hillingdon as a whole runs at about 130 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same period, against Northwood's 68. The borough includes busier town centres and a much heavier stretch of everything, so the comparison is a fair one for a buyer choosing within it.
The neighbourhood that produces those numbers is settled and comfortably off. Census 2021 put Northwood's population density at about 3,900 people per square kilometre, unemployment at about 2% and overcrowding at about 5% of households. Those are descriptions of the place, and none of them explains the crime rate on its own. They do describe a town where most front doors open onto a driveway and very few onto a crowded landing.
The mix is where Northwood differs from the national pattern. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 28% of local crime against about 35% across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour is about 19% here against 16% nationally, shoplifting about 12% against 8%, vehicle crime about 9% against 5% and burglary about 8% against 4%. Other theft is close to the national share, at about 6% against 7%. The crime that does happen in Northwood is aimed at property, and the people in it get off comparatively lightly. With vehicle crime and burglary running above their national shares, the street-level map on police.uk is worth checking for the exact road, particularly where cars live on the drive.
What happens after a report is a force-wide question with a less flattering answer. The Metropolitan Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, putting it 33rd of 42 forces in the year to May 2026. About 53% of its cases close with no suspect identified. That figure covers the whole of London's force and measures what happens once the window has already gone in. It has nothing to say about how likely the window is to go in on any road in Northwood.
Safety is one of Northwood's real strengths. Crime here runs at around half the borough rate and leans towards property, so the main precautions are a decent lock and a car that is not worth the trouble.