Most Britons think London is unsafe – but Londoners disagree
A majority of Britons in the UK think London is an “unsafe” place to live, but the majority of Londoners disagree, according to a new poll.
The latest poll comes after Donald Trump claimed there were “no go zones” for police in London and Nigel Farage described the capital as “in the grip of a crime wave”. Reform England’s candidate for London mayor, Laila Cunningham, also described the city as unsafe.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and London Mayor Sadiq Khan this week denied these criticisms, with statistics showing 2025 is one of the safest years for serious violent crime.
According to a new YouGov poll of 5,674 people taken on January 9, 61 per cent of Britons think London is an unsafe place to live and only 30 per cent see it as a safe place.
But the majority of Londoners (63 per cent) believe the capital is safe and 81 per cent of Londoners think their local area is safe.
London’s murder rate per capita is at its lowest level in 11 years since records began, according to figures released by the Met Police. There were 97 murders in 2025; This represents a decrease of 11 percent compared to the previous year.
Last year, the capital also recorded the fewest number of murders of victims under the age of 25 this century, with 95 per cent of all murder investigations returning positive results.
London’s murder rate currently stands at 1.1 per 100,000 people; this is lower than other cities in the UK and many global cities.
Sadiq Khan told Independent: “Something extraordinary happened in London last year. As talk of crime grew louder, London quietly reached the lowest murder rate per capita in its recorded history. Even London’s harshest critics have to admit this is impressive progress.
“For many this will undoubtedly come as a surprise. In recent years politicians and commentators have sought to spam our social media feeds with an endless stream of distortions and lies, painting a dystopian picture of a lawless place where criminals run amok.”
The London mayor added: “With all due respect Trump and Farage, London is not a lawless ‘war zone’. Violent crime is lower than ever.”
According to Metropolitan Police data, incidents of violence resulting in injury have also fallen by a fifth, while firearm attacks are less than halved compared to seven years ago. Hospital admissions of young people for knife attacks have also fallen by 43 percent since 2019.
These milestones come despite the population in London having increased by more than half a million since 2014.
To talk BBC News Programme On Monday, Mr Khan said: “The people who believe this perception and narrative are those who don’t know London.”
Just 34 per cent of Londoners think the capital is unsafe and just 15 per cent of Londoners think their local area is unsafe. This is a similar figure to the 11 percent nationally who think their area is unsafe.
Voters in the Reformed UK now think London is unsafe, with 85 per cent saying they think London is unsafe.
The mayor was also asked on the podcast why only 1 percent of phone thefts in London result in charges or convictions, according to police data. Mr Khan responded: “We have seen an increase in mobile thefts in all European cities in the past, including London.”
He said police were working to stop these phone-snatching gangs and had doubled the number of forces deployed in the West End, where phone thefts were common. He claims this results in a 50 percent reduction in personal robbery and a 25 percent reduction in personal theft. He added: “I’m not comfortable. We’ll make more progress.”
Twelve years ago, in 2014, 53 per cent of people in the UK thought London was safe.
