Yes, and the numbers say so without ambiguity. The published rate runs about thirty-six percent below the surrounding local-authority average. The recorded incident total for the last twelve months sits at around 535 across the whole area. The peninsula geometry means few outsiders pass through, and very few crimes pass through with them. The rate, the gap and the geography all point the same way. Safer by the metrics that matter than the average for coastal West Sussex.
Police-recorded crime for The Witterings comes in at about fifty-two incidents per thousand residents a year. The Chichester district as a whole runs at about eighty-one. The Witterings sits roughly thirty-six percent below that, which is a meaningful gap rather than a rounding error. The recorded incident count over the last twelve months came in at about 535, spread across both villages, the connecting lanes, and the surrounding rural area. The rate is the cleaner number for comparing one place against another, and the comparison it produces is straightforward: a rural-coastal village with recorded crime sitting well below the surrounding district.
The geographic explanation is the one every peninsula offers. There is one road in and the same road out. Through traffic does not exist as a category. The year-round resident profile sits heavily toward owner-occupiers in the latter half of working life, which is not the demographic that generates the night-time disorder driving counts in city-edge areas. The summer footfall does push the recorded numbers up across June, July and August, but the seasonal pulse leaves with the same tide that brings it, and the published rate already accounts for the population it is measured against.
For a buyer comparing The Witterings against other places on the Sussex coast, the rate is the figure to use, and the rate is one of the better ones on the West Sussex coast. The raw count alone can look larger than the rate suggests, because it sums across a full year and a statistical area broader than the village headcount itself, but the rate is built against the proper denominator. That denominator is what produces the thirty-six-percent gap to the local-authority average, and the gap is the headline. Few rural Sussex villages bring a stronger safety number to the table without making the buyer work to find it.
Excellent by the published numbers. The data is clean, the comparison is favourable, and the only road in and out is the same road that keeps the count low.