Writtle is a safe place to live, and noticeably safer than the district it belongs to. Recorded crime is about a third below the Chelmsford average. There were only a few hundred reported crimes in a year. Nothing in the category mix stands out once the small numbers are taken into account. It is a village with a pond, and its crime figures look like it.
Police recorded 302 crimes in Writtle in the twelve months to May 2026, a published rate of about 57 per 1,000 residents. That is roughly 32% below the average for the Chelmsford council area over the same year. For a village two miles from a city centre, it is a low figure, and a stable-looking one.
Across the Chelmsford council area as a whole, the rate over that year was about 84 crimes per 1,000 residents, against Writtle's 57. The district figure includes the city centre, with its shops and late nights, and the villages on its edges, and Writtle is on the calm side of that average. A buyer who sees "Chelmsford" in a crime table and moves on has read the city's figure and missed the village's.
The neighbourhood behind those numbers is settled and well housed. Unemployment was about 2% at the 2021 census, and about 2% of households were overcrowded. The average density across the village's census output areas is about 3,430 people per square kilometre, a figure pushed up by the compact streets near the centre and one that understates how much open land is a short walk away. Writtle's centre is a green, a duck pond and a Norman church, and none of the three gives Essex Police much to do.
Violence and sexual offences made up about 34% of Writtle's recorded crime over the year, against about 35% nationally, so the largest category is close to the national pattern. That heading also covers common assault where nobody was injured, which is one reason it tops the table almost everywhere. Shoplifting was about 13% here against 8% nationally, other theft about 12% against 7%, vehicle crime about 8% against 5%, drugs about 7% against 4%, and criminal damage and arson about 7% against 7%. With so few crimes in total, a handful of incidents can move any of those shares by several points, so this mix describes the past twelve months and could look different over the next twelve. For a particular road, the street-level crime map on the police's public website shows where recent incidents were logged, which is more useful than any village-wide percentage.
What happens after a report depends on Essex Police, and its figures are for the whole county force. Over the year to May 2026 the force charged a suspect in about 11% of cases, against about 12% nationally, which put it 28th of the 42 forces in that comparison. About 37% of its cases were closed with no suspect identified. Those figures describe how the force deals with crime once it is reported, which is a different question from how much crime happens in Writtle.
Safety is one of Writtle's real strengths. Crime is low, well below the surrounding district, and what does get recorded is spread thinly across ordinary categories.