Yelverton is safe by every measure the police publish. About thirty recorded crimes for every thousand residents. Just under two hundred offences across a whole year. The district around it runs at close to fifty per thousand. Quiet is what this village sells, and for once the numbers back the sales pitch.
The police.uk neighbourhood figures put the local rate at about 30 recorded crimes per 1,000 residents over the twelve months to May 2026, roughly 37% below the West Devon average. The count sitting behind that rate is 192 recorded offences in those twelve months. Both are published figures, and the rate is calculated against the statistical population base the police use rather than being the offence count divided by the people who live here.
The comparison is worth seeing in full rather than as a percentage. West Devon as a whole recorded about 47 crimes per 1,000 residents over the same twelve months, across a population of roughly 57,000. Yelverton sits at about 30 against that. The gap is not a rounding artefact, and it holds across a full year rather than a lucky quarter.
The texture underneath is what a low number tends to look like. Population density averages about 620 people per square kilometre, unemployment runs at about 2%, and about 1% of households are overcrowded. None of that causes anything on its own, and plenty of low-crime places look nothing like this one, but it is the profile the figures come out of: spread out, in work, and not short of rooms.
The mix needs handling carefully, because 192 offences across 12 categories is a small enough base that a handful of incidents moves a share by several points, so read it as a single year's snapshot rather than a settled trait. Violence and sexual offences account for about 47% of the total against about 35% across England and Wales, and that gap sounds more alarming than it is: the category is a broad statutory grouping that includes common assault with no injury, and it is the largest category almost everywhere. The rest tracks the national shape closely. Anti-social behaviour is about 14% here against about 16% nationally, public order about 8% against about 7%, criminal damage and arson about 8% against about 7%, other theft about 8% against about 7%, and vehicle crime about 4% against about 5%.
What happens after a report is a separate question, and the honest answer is less flattering. Devon and Cornwall Police charged a suspect in about 8% of recorded cases over the same twelve months, against about 12% across England and Wales, which puts the force 42nd out of 42. About 26% of cases were closed with no suspect ever identified. That is a force-wide figure covering everything from Plymouth to the moor, carries no signal about this village specifically, and measures something different from the crime rate: not how likely something is to happen, but how likely anybody is to answer for it afterwards. A place that produces very little crime being policed by a force that resolves very little of it is an odd pair of facts to hold at the same time, and both are true.
Safety is the strongest thing this area has going for it. The rate sits well below the district's own, the annual volume is small enough to count by hand, and the only real caveat lands after the phone call rather than before it.