Yes, and comfortably so. Crime runs at about half the district's rate. Roughly one recorded crime a week across the whole village. Hardly anyone is out of work. Rotherfield's biggest security threat is the neighbour who notices the car isn't back yet.
Police recorded 66 crimes in the area in the year from June 2025 to May 2026. The published rate works out at about 27 crimes per 1,000 residents, roughly 52% below the Wealden average. That is a small number in absolute terms, and small numbers move around, so one bad month can look dramatic on a chart without meaning much. The direction of the comparison is what holds up.
Wealden as a whole records about 55 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same period, against Rotherfield's 27. Wealden is not a rough district to begin with, which makes sitting at half its rate a harder trick than it sounds.
The neighbourhood texture fits the numbers. Population density averages about 941 people per square kilometre across the area's statistical zones, unemployment sits at about 2%, and overcrowded homes come to about 1%. None of that causes low crime on its own. It does describe a place where most houses are occupied by the same people for a long time, and where a stranger on the lane gets remembered.
The harder question is what happens after something is reported, and here the answer belongs to the police force, not the village. Sussex Police charges a suspect in about 10% of cases, against about 12% nationally, over the year to May 2026, which places it 35th of 42 forces. About 48% of cases across the force are closed with no suspect identified. That is a force-wide statistic, not a measure of how safe Rotherfield is, and it answers a separate question: the chances of trouble here are low, and the chances of anyone being charged if it happens are no better than anywhere else in Sussex.
Safety is one of Rotherfield's real strengths. The risk is low enough that the practical advice is to lock the shed and stop reading crime maps.