Potters Bar's crime rate matches Hertsmere's almost to the decimal point. It is an ordinary amount of crime for a commuter town. The mix looks like the national one, give or take. A little more theft goes on than average, and a little less violence. Anyone hoping to find either a fortress or a problem will come away with neither.
Police records for the year from June 2025 to May 2026 put the crime rate in Potters Bar at about 92 per 1,000 people, about level with the local authority average. That covers 2,385 recorded crimes over the twelve months. Both are published figures for the town's own statistical areas, and the police.uk street map is where a buyer can see which roads those crimes clustered on, one month at a time.
Hertsmere as a whole recorded about 91 crimes per 1,000 people over the same year, set beside about 92 for Potters Bar. The gap is a rounding error. The town has been policed by Hertfordshire Constabulary since 2000, after decades inside the Metropolitan Police District, and its crime rate now looks exactly like a Hertfordshire one.
The neighbourhood texture is suburban and comfortable. The town averages about 4,000 residents per square kilometre, unemployment is about 3%, and about 4% of households are overcrowded. Those numbers describe the kind of place this is, a dense ring of family semis with most adults in work, and they explain nothing about any particular crime on their own.
The mix of offences tracks the national picture closely. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault without injury, make up about 31% of recorded crime in Potters Bar against about 35% nationally, so the biggest category is smaller here than across England and Wales. Anti-social behaviour accounts for about 19% against 16% nationally, and shoplifting for about 8% on both counts. Other theft is the one that stands out, at about 12% against about 7% nationally, with vehicle crime at about 6% against 5% and criminal damage and arson at about 6% against 7%. The town loses more unattended property than the national average and sees less violence, which is roughly what a place with commuter car parks and well-kept front gardens would expect.
What happens after a report is decided across the whole county. Hertfordshire Constabulary charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 23rd of 42 forces. About 40% of cases across the force are closed with no suspect identified at all. Those are force-wide figures covering every town in Hertfordshire, they describe what happens once a crime has been reported, and they say nothing about how likely one is to happen in Potters Bar. For anyone whose bike goes missing from the drive, they set expectations sensibly low.
Potters Bar lands in the middle on safety, an average amount of crime for its borough with a slight lean toward theft. That makes it about as unremarkable as a commuter town can be, which for most buyers is the right result.