Yes, and unremarkably so, which is the answer most people actually want. Crime here runs roughly a tenth below the district around it. Fewer than four hundred offences were recorded across the whole town in a year. Unemployment and overcrowding both sit near the floor. This is not a fortress, it is a small town that simply does not generate much volume, and the numbers behave accordingly.
Police.uk recorded 384 crimes in the town in the year to May 2026, giving a published rate of about 45 per thousand residents. That sits roughly 11% below the East Devon average. Both of those are published figures rather than sums worked out here, and the rate uses a statistical population base of its own, so dividing the count by the number of people living here will not reproduce it and is not meant to.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a verdict. East Devon as a whole recorded about 50 crimes per thousand residents over the same twelve months, against Ottery's roughly 45. That is a real gap and a modest one. Anyone hoping the town is an order of magnitude quieter than its neighbours will be disappointed, and anyone worried it is an outlier in the other direction can stop worrying.
The texture behind those numbers is what you would guess from standing in the street. Population density averages about 3,470 people per square kilometre across the area's small statistical areas, which describes a compact built-up centre rather than scattered farmland. Unemployment runs at about 2% and overcrowded households at about 2%. None of that causes anything on its own, and treating any of it as an explanation for a crime figure is the kind of shortcut that ends up in a newspaper column rather than an honest answer. It is simply the shape of the place: small, settled, employed, and not short of rooms.
The category breakdown needs handling with care, because the totals here are low enough that a handful of incidents moves a share by several points. With that firmly in mind, violence and sexual offences accounted for about 48% of recorded crime over those twelve months, against about 35% nationally. That is a broad statutory grouping covering everything from serious assault to common assault without injury, and it is the largest single category in almost every place in the country, so the headline figure flatters nobody and frightens everybody. Criminal damage and arson came in at about 13% against about 7% nationally. Anti-social behaviour ran lower than the national picture, about 10% against about 16%, and shoplifting lower again, about 5% against about 8%. Other theft sat at about 7% locally and about 7% nationally, which is to say identical. Across thirteen categories with 384 incidents in total, this is a snapshot rather than a settled characteristic of the town, and next year's version will look different for reasons that have nothing to do with Ottery changing.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and a less comfortable one. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the same twelve months, against about 12% nationally, which places the force last of the 42 forces in England and Wales on that measure. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified at all. That is a force-wide performance figure, not a property of this town, and it says nothing about how safe your street is. It says something about what to expect if you ever have to make the call.
Safety is one of the better things Ottery has going for it. The rate is genuinely below the surrounding district, the volume is small, and the main caveat is not the town at all but the odds of anyone being charged once something has already happened.