Port Isaac is about as safe as an English postcode gets. The recorded crime rate sits roughly 45% below the county average. Seventy-nine offences in a whole year. Around 690 people to the square kilometre, which is rural arithmetic rather than urban. Safety here is less a policing triumph than a consequence of there not being many people around to trouble each other.
The published figures put the recorded crime rate at about 41 offences per 1,000 people in the year to May 2026, from 79 recorded offences over those twelve months. Both are published as they stand, and the rate is calculated on a statistical-area population rather than by dividing one of those numbers by the other, so treat them as two separate readings of the same quiet year rather than one being the working-out for the other. What the brief does not carry is any breakdown of what those offences were, so anyone telling you what kind of place this is based on the type of crime here is guessing.
The comparison is what gives the number meaning. Across Cornwall as a whole, the rate runs at about 74 offences per 1,000 people over the same period. Port Isaac's roughly 41 is not a marginal improvement on that. It is a different order of experience, and it holds up against most of the county, not just against its worst corners.
The texture behind it is unremarkable in the best sense. Population density averages about 690 people per square kilometre. Unemployment sits at around 3%. Roughly 2% of households are overcrowded on the census measure. None of those figures causes the crime rate, and it would be lazy to claim they do, but together they describe a settled, low-pressure, thinly populated place where very little is happening at two in the morning because almost nobody is up.
What the crime rate does not tell you is what happens after somebody calls it in, and that is a separate question with a less flattering answer. Devon and Cornwall Police charged or summonsed a suspect in about 8% of recorded offences over the year to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which places the force 42nd out of the 42 forces measured. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect identified at all. That is a force-wide performance figure covering an area far larger than this village, it says nothing about any particular street here, and it must not be read as a comment on how safe the place is. It is the honest answer to a different question: if something does happen to you, the odds on somebody being charged for it are not good.
Worth keeping the two apart when a seller starts quoting statistics. A low crime rate is a genuine feature of living here. A low charge rate is a feature of the force, and it applies just as much in the towns where the crime rate is double.
Safety is the strongest thing Port Isaac has going for it, by a distance and without qualification. The caveat sits entirely on the enforcement side rather than on the risk side, and for most buyers that is a trade worth taking.