On the recorded numbers, no, and pretending otherwise would be a disservice to anyone about to spend money here. Crime across the wider area runs well above the North Devon average. Shoplifting takes a far bigger slice of the total than it does nationally. Anti-social behaviour takes a smaller one. The lanes feel like nothing ever happens on them, and the published figures disagree politely but firmly.
Police.uk recorded 1,839 offences across the Umberleigh area in the twelve months to May 2026, which works out at a published rate of about 107 crimes per 1,000 residents. That sits roughly 45% above the average for North Devon as a whole. One thing to hold onto before the number does any damage: these figures cover the wider area around the village and the villages beyond it, not the handful of lanes by the station, and the published rate is calculated on statistical-area populations rather than on a headcount of anybody's parish.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a percentage. North Devon as a whole records about 73 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months. The Umberleigh area records about 107. Both numbers are published, both cover the same period, and the gap between them is the honest headline.
What makes that gap odd is the kind of place producing it. Population density averages about 260 people per square kilometre, which is fields with houses in them rather than streets with houses on them. Unemployment sits at about 2%. Overcrowded households make up about 1%. None of those readings describes an area under obvious pressure, which is exactly why the crime rate here confuses people who expect the two things to move together.
The category breakdown explains more than the total does. Violence and sexual offences account for about 37% of recorded crime here against about 35% nationally, so the largest category is almost exactly where the country sits, and it is worth knowing that this is a broad statutory grouping that sweeps in common assault without injury alongside far more serious offences. The genuine outlier is shoplifting, at about 18% of the total against about 8% nationally. Anti-social behaviour runs at about 12% against about 16% nationally, and public order at about 8% against about 7%. Criminal damage and arson comes in at about 6% against about 7%. Strip out the retail theft and the profile looks a great deal more like everywhere else than the headline rate suggests.
Then there is the question of what happens when somebody reports something, which is a different question entirely and answers nothing about how safe the lane is. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of cases over the same twelve months, against about 12% across the country, which places the force last of the 42 forces in England and Wales on that measure. About 26% of cases closed with no suspect ever identified. That is a force-wide performance figure, not a local one, but it is the answer to the question most victims actually ask, and the answer is not encouraging.
Safety is the weakest thing about this area on the published evidence, and the softening detail is that the weakness is concentrated in a category most residential buyers will never personally encounter. Anyone reading the rate as a warning about walking home is reading it wrong; anyone reading it as a rounding error is reading it just as wrong.