Wickham Bishops is a safe place to live, with crime running at about half the rate of the district around it. Crime is low by any local measure. Unemployment barely registers. Overcrowding barely registers either. When something does happen here, the neighbours are still talking about it a month later.
Essex Police recorded 148 crimes in Wickham Bishops in the year to May 2026, a published rate of about 25 offences per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 52% below the average for the Maldon district. For a village of this size, that works out at a handful of incidents in most months.
The Maldon district's own rate over the same year was about 52 offences per 1,000 residents, against about 25 in the village. The district is no hotspot itself, and the village still manages to come in at half of it.
The surroundings help explain the numbers. There are about 651 people per square kilometre here on average, a spread-out kind of density with large plots and long gaps between front doors. Unemployment is about 1% and overcrowding is about 1%, so the conditions that tend to come with higher crime elsewhere are largely missing here. Those figures describe the place. They don't prove why its crime is low.
The mix of crimes comes from small totals, so a few incidents either way can move any share by several points. Violence and sexual offences, a broad legal category that includes common assault with no injury, made up about 44% of recorded crime, against about 35% nationally. Other theft was about 11% against 7% nationally, vehicle crime about 10% against 5%, and criminal damage and arson about 8% against 7%. Burglary was about 7%, against 4% nationally, and public order offences about 5%, against 7%. A village full of detached houses with cars on the drive offers the obvious things to steal, and on a base this small one busy month can make the cars and the houses look like a trend.
What happens after a report is a question for the force rather than the village. Essex Police charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which puts it 28th of 42 forces in England and Wales. About 37% of its cases are closed with no suspect identified. That figure covers the whole county and says nothing about how safe Wickham Bishops is. In a village where the nearest witness is often a hedge, it does say a fair bit about the odds of getting a stolen catalytic converter back.
Safety is one of the village's real strengths, with crime at half the rate of a district that is calm already. The main risk is to things left on the drive, and not to the people who live here.