No, not by the standards of the district around it. Recorded crime runs at about 69 per thousand people. Across the wider district the figure is nearer 55. That is roughly a quarter above the local benchmark, in a coastal village most people picture as a nap with a sea view. Safety is the weakest thing on this page, and softening that would be a disservice to anyone reading it before making an offer.
The police neighbourhood record logged 289 crimes here in the year to May 2026, published alongside a rate of about 69 per thousand people. Both are published figures rather than anything worked out here, and the rate is calculated against a statistical-area population rather than a headcount of residents, so it is not the count divided by whoever happens to live here. What the record will not tell you is where in the village any of it happened.
Set side by side over the same twelve months: about 69 per thousand in the village, about 55 per thousand across Torridge as a whole. The gap between them is about 24%, and that is the number worth carrying into any conversation with an agent who describes the area as sleepy.
The neighbourhood texture behind those figures is not what most people would predict. Population density averages about 2,810 people per square kilometre across the village's small areas. Unemployment sits at about 2%. Overcrowding runs at roughly one household in a hundred. None of that causes anything, and none of it explains the crime rate, but it does mean the usual lazy story about what kind of place records above-average crime does not fit here.
The mix comes with a warning label. With 289 crimes spread across twelve categories, a handful of incidents moves any share by several points, so this is a snapshot rather than a settled trait of the place. Violence and sexual offences account for about 58% of the total against about 35% across England and Wales, which sounds worse than it reads: the category is a broad statutory grouping that takes in common assault without injury and is the largest heading almost everywhere. Anti-social behaviour lands at about 16% here and about 16% nationally, which is to say identical. Criminal damage and arson runs at about 9% against about 7%. Shoplifting sits at about 5% against about 8% nationally, and public order at about 4% against about 7%.
Then there is what happens after somebody reports something. Devon and Cornwall Police charged or summonsed a suspect in about 8% of cases over those twelve months, against about 12% across England and Wales, which puts the force 42nd out of 42. In about 26% of cases the file closed with nobody identified at all. That is a force-wide measure of process, not a measure of this village, and it answers an entirely different question from the crime rate. Blending the two is how people end up worrying about the wrong thing.
Safety is where this place gives ground. The recorded rate sits above the district it belongs to, the force behind it charges in fewer cases than any other in England and Wales, and a buyer is better off pricing that in than assuming a coastal village comes with coastal quiet as standard.