Blogger’s Note: I started regularly visiting Sutton around 1993 – although I had visited the area since the mid to late 1980s for educational reasons. I moved permanently to Sutton in late 1996 – when I married my fiancé (who lived in Sutton) – although I had been teaching gongfu at the Highfield Hall from around 1994. Compared to the relative poverty of rural Devon – Sutton seemed like a Shangri-la to me – and was probably the only place in the UK that I could hae become an independent martial arts instructor. Sutton was wealthy, affluent, and its streets were paved in gold. The place was recession-proof – and one of the few areas to actually boom during the devastating Thatcher years. As a working-class male – I thought I had stepped into an alternative dimension. I suddenly comprehended how my class enemies actually perceived the world – and why they liked capitalism.
This probably explains “why” Sutton keeps getting declared the safest place in the UK. It is an affluent London Borough (formerly East Surrey) with pockets of deprived working class areas. It has a very good education system with some of the best State and private schools in the UK. Perhaps the good attitude amongst its population stems from a solid base in education despite continuous government cuts and reforms. The Borough (technically Sutton & Cheam) is multicultural whilst the local Council is conservative with a small “c” regardless of the hue of the elected Councillors (changing Councillors changes nothing). The MP is almost always Tory – or a right-leaning LibDem. Policies are regressive with everyone having to rely on private money to get things done. This is why the poor White areas – such as Roundshaw and St Helier – never recover from their economic backwardness. Large amounts of private wealth builds security amongst those who possess it. The tax paid is not redistributed via investment in the poor areas. The wealthy get wealthier and their need to commit crime is reduced – hence the “safe* designation. ACW (17.9.2025)
Written by Amy Houghton Contributing writer – Monday 15 September 2025
There’s no denying that London has its fair share of not-so-nice areas. The capital city is home to all 10 of the UK’s pickpocketing hotspots, crimes on the Underground are reportedly up by 1.3 percent and we all have a local alleyway that is best avoided at night. But, it turns out that there are also several parts of London that boast some of the lowest crime rates in the country. And one south London neighbourhood has just been named the safest place in the entire UK.
Security training platform Get Licensed has ranked the UK’s local authorities according to how safe they are. It compared police-recorded crime with year-on-year change in crime severity, reoffending and antisocial behaviour, and counted CCTV in public spaces to determine its ranking.
The south London town of Sutton emerged as the nation’s safest place to live. It had an annual crime rate of 61 per 1,000 people and saw a 2.75 percent fall in crime year on year. Get Licensed also counted 230 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 people in Sutton and found a reoffending rate of 15.74 percent (the average rate across the whole of the UK is 26.5 percent). It added that ‘when there are crimes in Sutton, they tend to be robberies or thefts, with little to no reports of weapons possession’. Overall, the town earned a safety score of 8.09 out of 10.
Sutton wasn’t the only London postcode to score highly. In fact the list of the top 10 safest areas in the country was dominated by the capital city. Kingston-upon-Thames was named the third safest place in the UK with a score of 7.81 out of 10, Richmond ranked fifth, Hounslow was seventh, Redbridge was ninth and Barnet was 10th.
But the research also found that London is home to two of the most dangerous places in Britain. With a crime rate more than triple that of Sutton (194.8 per 1,000 people) and an overall safety score of just 0.87, Camden was named the least safe area in the country. It was closely followed by Islington, which has an annual crime rate of 140.8 per 1,000 people and was given overall safety score of 1.88 out of 10.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 