Polegate is Wealden's town, so Polegate is where Wealden's crime lives. The published rate is about 62 recorded incidents per thousand residents over the twelve months to March 2026. Roughly thirteen percent above the Wealden average of around 55. Just over 830 recorded incidents across the same year. Concentration is what towns do to statistics that villages spread out.
The two figures sit next to each other and need reading together. Wealden as a district is made mostly of villages, and villages record very little crime, because they have very few people, very little through traffic, and very little at street level to steal. Polegate is where a genuine town sits inside that district: a High Street, a supermarket, a Premier Inn, a railway station, an industrial estate on Dittons Road, and the daily footfall that comes with any of those things. Towns concentrate what villages disperse, and being thirteen percent above a village-heavy average is not the same statement as being thirteen percent above an urban average. It is the difference between saying there is more crime here than in the surrounding countryside and saying there is a lot of crime here. The first is true. The second, at about 62 per thousand over a year, is not. What the headline rate cannot tell you is which streets, which times of day, or which offence categories dominate. Any buyer serious about safety should look at the police mapping for the specific address before signing anything, because the rate is only the town's average, and the map is the answer to the question a buyer actually wants to ask.
Average for safety at three out of five. Not a dangerous town, not a village, and not much of a story either way at this altitude of data. If you want statistically boring, buy in one of the surrounding villages this page also covers: Alfriston, Berwick, Selmeston, or Alciston. If you want the shops, the trains, and the flats above them, accept that town-shaped numbers come with the town.