Less safe than the rest of Dorset, and not by a rounding error. Recorded crime here runs roughly a fifth above the county's rate. Violence and antisocial behaviour take a bigger slice of the total than they do nationally. Theft takes a smaller one. This is not a dangerous place to live, but it is a noisier one than the word village leads people to expect.
The published figure from police.uk is about 67 recorded crimes per thousand residents across the twelve months to May 2026, from 901 recorded crimes in that period. That is a rate calculated on statistical areas rather than something you can rebuild from the population of the village, and anyone dividing one by the other will get a different answer and the wrong one. Take the rate as published, which is what a lender, an insurer and a nervous relative will all do anyway.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a bare adjective. Dorset as a whole recorded about 55 crimes per thousand residents over the same twelve months. This area recorded about 67, which is roughly 22% higher. Both numbers are modest by the standards of urban England, and the gap between them is real rather than statistical noise.
Some texture on what kind of place produces those numbers. Population density across the area averages around 3,820 people per square kilometre, which is not village density in any meaningful sense: these are tight quarry-worker terraces in adjoining settlements, not cottages down lanes. Unemployment sits at about 3%, and around 2% of households are overcrowded, both of which are unremarkable. None of that explains the crime figure, and none of it is offered as an explanation. It is offered because people picture a hamlet and then wonder why the numbers look like a town.
The mix matters more than the total, and here the pairing with the national picture does the real work. Violence and sexual offences account for about 51% of recorded crime here against roughly 35% across England and Wales. That grouping sounds worse than it usually is: it is a broad statutory category that runs from serious assault down to common assault without injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere. Antisocial behaviour is about 21% locally against roughly 16% nationally. Criminal damage and arson sit at about 7%, effectively level with the national 7%. Other theft is about 5% against roughly 7% nationally, and public order about 5% against roughly 7%. The shape of that is a place with more disorder and less thieving than the country at large, which is a different problem from the one most buyers are imagining when they ask this question.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and it belongs to the force rather than the postcode. Dorset Police charge a suspect in about 14% of cases against roughly 12% nationally, which puts the force twelfth of 42 in the country. Around 35% of cases close with no suspect ever identified. That last number is the honest answer to whether anyone gets caught, and it is not far off the national experience of reporting a crime. It says nothing about how safe your street is, and blending the two is how people end up frightened by the wrong statistic.
On safety this area is the weaker end of its own profile: consistently above the county rate, weighted towards disorder rather than burglary, and unlikely to feel threatening on an ordinary weekday. Buy here for the coast and the price, not because the crime map is going to reassure you.