Stoke-sub-Hamdon is one of the quieter corners of Somerset, and the gap is not marginal. About 57 recorded offences for every thousand people. The county as a whole sits nearer 93. Two hundred and twenty crimes in total across a full year, covering the village and the parishes around it. This is the sort of quiet people call boring until they have lived somewhere that isn't.
Police recorded a rate of about 57 crimes per 1,000 people here in the year to May 2026, roughly 38% below the local-authority average, on a total of 220 offences over those twelve months. Both are published figures rather than something reproducible with a calculator and a population count: the rate is built on statistical-area populations, not on the number of people who live in the village, so dividing one by the other gives a different and wrong answer.
Put the two next to each other and the comparison stops being rhetorical. About 57 per 1,000 here. About 93 per 1,000 across Somerset. Below average is a phrase attached to almost everything in property listings. This particular one arrives with both numbers attached.
As for the kind of place producing those figures, population density averages about 847 people per square kilometre, unemployment runs at about 2%, and about 2% of households are overcrowded. That is a small settlement with a lot of open ground around it and not much pressure on the housing. None of those numbers causes the crime figure, and joining them up with an arrow would be tidier than it is honest.
The mix deserves care rather than a headline. Across 220 offences spread over eleven categories, violence and sexual offences account for about 52%, against about 35% nationally. That heading is a broad statutory grouping that runs from serious assault down to common assault without injury, which is why it leads the table almost everywhere in the country. Anti-social behaviour comes in at about 16% locally against about 16% nationally, which is level. Public order is about 10% against about 7%, criminal damage and arson about 8% against about 7%, and other theft about 4% against about 7%. On totals this small, a handful of incidents shifts any of those shares by several points, so treat the mix as one year's snapshot and not as a description of the village's character.
What happens after somebody reports something is decided at force level, not street level. Avon and Somerset Constabulary charged a suspect in about 11% of cases over the twelve months to May 2026, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 24th of 42 forces. About 30% of cases closed with no suspect identified at all. That is the answer to "will they catch them", which is a different question from "is it safe here", and the two should never be welded together. The first is set across a whole force area covering cities as well as villages. The second is set by how little actually happens on these lanes.
Safety is the one thing here that needs no qualifying clause, and the distance between the local rate and the county rate is the least arguable figure on this page. Anyone moving from a town will notice the difference inside a fortnight, most of it after dark.