Takeley and Little Canfield records about 202 crimes for every 1,000 residents a year, and that number arrives with any house you buy here. The parish takes in part of Stansted Airport, so the village shares its crime count with a place that sees thousands of strangers a day. Behind that figure is a modern, owner-occupied village where the broadband works and a field is a short walk from most front doors. It is a decent place to live once a buyer has made peace with the first number.
Police.uk recorded about 202 crimes per 1,000 residents across the built-up area in the twelve months from June 2025 to May 2026. That is roughly 227% above the average for Uttlesford as a whole. The mix is worth a closer look. "Other theft" makes up 18% of recorded crime here, against about 7% across England and Wales, and vehicle crime is 7% against 5%. Violence and sexual offences, the largest category almost everywhere, come to 23% here against 35% nationally. Those shares fit a parish with an airport inside its boundary better than a village with a crime problem on its residential closes, though the published figures don't say which is which. Essex Police, the force covering the area, charged 11% of cases over the same year, slightly below the national rate of 12%.
Homes are not cheap. The Land Registry's last twelve months, to late May 2026, show 53 sales at a typical price of about £440,000. Detached houses went for around £610,000, semis for about £385,000 and terraces for roughly £379,000, so the gap between a terrace and a semi is small and the jump to detached is large. The most common council-tax band is E, and only 12% of homes sit in bands A or B. Takeley was built for people with a bit of money, and the council's valuation list says so before anyone opens a brochure.
Renting is cheaper on paper. Uttlesford's typical private rent is about £1,280 a month as of April 2026, a council-wide figure that also takes in the cheaper corners of the district. A three-bed averages about £1,430 across the authority and a detached house about £1,760.
The housing stock is mostly houses with gardens. On the council-tax valuation list, which covers every dwelling, 36% are detached, 24% semi-detached, 18% terraced and 9% bungalows, with flats at just 5%. Only 18% were built before 1930, and the new estates are what most buyers will actually be viewing. Of the homes with an energy certificate, 77% are rated C or better, which is what happens when much of a village went up after 2003. About 65% of homes are on mains gas, so roughly a third are heated some other way, and a buyer of one of the older cottages off The Street should ask which way before they get attached to the beams.
Nearly three-quarters of households own their home. The typical resident is 39, and modelled gross household income came to about £70,500 in the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area by the Office for National Statistics. That is a young, solvent village of commuters and families, and the driveways show it. Almost two-thirds of households run more than one car.
Flood risk is mostly surface water. About 19% of postcodes are rated high on at least one flood indicator, surface water included, and about 16% medium. The Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones cover none of the built-up area. The risk here is rain with nowhere to drain, and a flood-zone search that comes back clean says nothing about it.
Historic England lists 64 buildings in the area, two of them Grade I and three Grade II*. The Church of the Holy Trinity is one of the Grade I pair, and the moated site of Takeley Priory at Warish Hall is a scheduled monument. Smiths Green is the one conservation area, so owners of the older houses there need consent for changes that a new-build owner on the estates could make without asking. Most of the village is new enough that the planners won't trouble anyone over a conservatory.
Connectivity is a mixed bag. Gigabit broadband reaches about 91% of premises, which is useful, because 35% of working residents were at home on census day. Only 1% commuted by train and 54% drove. Stansted Airport station is in the parish, with Elsenham and Stansted Mountfitchet as the other options, though a station that mostly serves holidaymakers doesn't make a village a rail commuter's base. The 45 bus stops each see around 152 weekday departures on average, about eight in the peak hour, and every one has a weekend service. The Department for Transport's 2019 modelling put the nearest town centre 18 minutes away by car and 34 by public transport. Bus timetables have changed since 2019, so the public transport figure is the less reliable of the two.
Schools are a strength. Takeley Primary School is the village's own, and across the four primaries in the surrounding postcode districts the average Key Stage 2 maths score was about 106, above the expected standard. Forest Hall School and Helena Romanes School are the secondary options, about 18 minutes away by car in the 2019 modelling. Ofsted rates 218 of the 246 graded schools across Essex good or outstanding, though a county-wide grade profile tells a parent very little about one catchment.
The surroundings are the best thing about the place. Green space is about 190 metres from the average home, water about 160 metres away, and the National Cycle Network roughly 290 metres away. Hatfield Forest lies on the doorstep, so the village combines a runway with ancient woodland pasture. Few places can say that.
Takeley and Little Canfield works for buyers who need the airport and the A120 for work, want a modern detached house with a garden, and will take the cycle path at the weekend. It works less well for anyone who wants a village with a pub-and-green identity, a train into London that isn't full of luggage, or a crime figure they can show their parents without explaining it.
For a buyer, safety here means accepting a crime rate that sits with the parish because the airport sits in it, and locking the car on the drive. Once that is accepted, the green space, the schools and a young population that owns its homes make the place a fair, middling choice. It earns its price in walks and good broadband, and it pays for them in the crime figures.