Witham is less safe than the district around it, by a margin a buyer should notice. About 80 crimes are recorded for every 1,000 people. That is about a quarter above the Braintree average. Violence accounts for nearly half of it. On paper it is a commuter town, but the police log runs busier than the rest of the district.
Essex Police recorded 2,349 crimes in Witham in the year from June 2025 to May 2026, and the published rate for the town over that year is about 80 per 1,000 people. That puts Witham roughly 26% above the average for Braintree district.
Across the whole district the published rate is about 64 per 1,000, against Witham's 80. The district includes the villages that ring the town, and between them they record noticeably less crime per head than the town does. The national police crime map shows recorded crime street by street, and a few months of it around the exact address will tell a buyer more than either average.
Witham is a built-up town, with an average of about 4,950 people per square kilometre across its neighbourhoods. At the 2021 Census about 3% of residents were unemployed, and about 3% of households were overcrowded. All three describe what kind of town Witham is. None of them explains the crime rate, and nothing in the record links them to it.
The largest single category is violence and sexual offences, at about 46% of Witham's recorded crime against about 35% across England and Wales. That heading is broad by law and includes common assault where nobody is injured, and it is the biggest category almost everywhere. In Witham it is also clearly above the national share. Anti-social behaviour makes up about 11%, below the 16% national share. Public order offences, criminal damage and arson, and other theft each come to about 7%, level with England and Wales. Shoplifting is about 5% against 8% nationally. For a town whose high street grew up on a Roman road, Witham's shoplifters are surprisingly restrained.
Charging is done across Essex as a whole. Essex Police charges a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, and ranks 28th of 42 forces in England and Wales over the year to May 2026. In about 37% of cases the force closes the file without identifying a suspect. These numbers describe what Essex Police does once a crime has been reported anywhere in the county. They say nothing about how likely a crime is in Witham itself.
Safety is Witham's poor spot, with a crime rate clearly above its own district and more violence in the mix than the national pattern, and buyers here should weigh it before almost anything else.