Swanley is the rough end of a smooth district. Crime runs well above the Sevenoaks average. The mix looks much like anywhere else in the country. Antisocial behaviour and vandalism run a little hot. Ordinary enough for a town, and loud by the standards of its own district.
In the year from June 2025 to May 2026, police figures recorded 1,785 crimes in Swanley, a published rate of about 90 per 1,000 residents. That rate is roughly 40% above the average for the Sevenoaks district. It is a rate built on a published population base for the statistical areas involved, so the two numbers here should be read as they stand.
The Sevenoaks district as a whole comes in at about 64 crimes per 1,000 residents, against Swanley's 90. Swanley is being marked against the rest of its own district, and the town has always had more in common with the south-east London suburbs over the border than with most of the places it shares a council with. The gap is real, and part of it is the company Swanley keeps on paper.
Swanley packs in about 5,400 people per square kilometre on average, unemployment is about 3% and about 5% of households are overcrowded. That describes a built-up post-war town with work and a station, the kind of place where people, shops, car parks and late buses all meet in the same small centre. None of those figures explains the crime rate on its own, and none of them should be read as a cause. They describe the setting the numbers come from.
Violence and sexual offences make up about 35% of Swanley's recorded crime, the same as the 35% share across England and Wales, and that category is broad enough to include common assault with no injury. Antisocial behaviour is about 19% against 16% nationally, and criminal damage and arson about 9% against 7%. Shoplifting is about 8%, level with the national 8%, vehicle crime about 6% against 5%, and other theft about 6% against 7%. The shape of Swanley's crime is the national shape, nudged towards nuisance and broken things. To see what is recorded near a particular road, the police.uk street-level map shows incidents month by month, and a few minutes on it says more about one street than any town average.
On what happens after a report, Kent Police charges a suspect in about 16% of cases, against about 12% across England and Wales, which puts the force sixth of 42. About 36% of its cases close with no suspect identified. Those are force-wide figures for the whole of Kent, and they measure how cases end, which is a separate matter from how often crime happens in Swanley. Kent Police finishes the job more often than most forces, and the town still gives it plenty to finish.
Safety is Swanley's weak spot: the crime rate is well above its own district's, and a mix that matches the national pattern does not change how much of it there is.