Streets lined by multi-million pound homes in London’s swanky Mayfair and Soho neighbourhoods can today be named as the burglary hotspots of England and Wales.
can reveal the sector built around Regent Street, one of the capital’s most famed areas because of its breadth of shops and restaurants, recorded 282 break-ins last year.
Home to just 2,280 residents, our in-depth analysis suggests that particular block, which includes Oxford Street, New Bond Street, Carnaby Street and Saville Row, saw 123 burglaries for every 1,000 people.
Full results of our probe, consisting of all 37,000-plus neighbourhoods in England and Wales, is available to view below in an interactive map.
Powered with official statistics, it breaks down crime rates by ‘Lower layer Super Output Areas’ (LSOAs) — small communities consisting of around 500 to 1,500 people.
Each neighbourhood is ranked by offences per 1,000 population, allowing you to see where the hotspots are. The darker the red, the higher the crime rate. To find your area, select your local police force from the drop-down list and zoom into wherever you want to search.
‘s investigation comes with Britain gripped by a crime epidemic, with Labour under growing pressure to get tougher on offenders to stop rates spiralling and avoid triggering a backlash among voters who want criminals behind bars.
It also comes after Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright became the latest celebrities to have suffered a home raid. Four masked suspects reportedly entered their sprawling £3.5million Essex mansion but hurried away when Mark started yelling.
Although the statistics are collected by police forces, they don’t solely include domestic burglaries. It means the statistics are skewed by thieves trying to steal from shops, offices and other businesses.
By tapping or hovering over the area in the map, you can also see the total number of burglaries logged, as well as the crime density (reports per square mile).
No data is available for Greater Manchester Police because the force has not updated its section of the national crime database since July 2019.
Our maps also exclude crimes committed on trains or at train stations as they are dealt with by the British Transport Police, rather than the local force.
The figures include all alleged crimes which are reported to the police and given a crime number, regardless of the outcome of any investigation.
For our analysis, neighbourhoods are named by the electoral ward within its local authority, meaning neighbouring areas may appear with the same name but have different statistics. That is because each ward may have numerous LSOAs.
Within London, for example, there are six appearances of ‘West End’.
The district technically called E01035716, which swaddles Regent Street, is the burglary capital.
Nearly 2,400 neighbourhoods (6.5 per cent) have a burglary rate of more than 10 per 1,000 residents.
But nearly 6,200 areas have a burglary rate of effectively zero per 1,000 residents.
According to our analysis, the area with the second highest burglary rate is in Birmingham New Street, the main railway station of the West Midlands city.
The neighbourhood — which includes the train station, Victoria Square and the city council headquarters — has a burglary rate of 120 per 1,000 population. This comes from a total of 149 burglaries last year compared to its more than 1,200 residents.
The same district was also named the most crime-ridden neighbourhood in England and Wales in our analysis of violent crime last week.
In third is the area of the City of London which includes St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as Liverpool Street, Bank, Cannon Street and Blackfriars stations.
The neighbourhood saw 209 burglaries last year. Against its population of around 2,500, this gives a rate of 82.
Heavily pregnant actress Michelle Keegan and her husband Mark Wright were the victims of a terrifying burglary at their £3.5million Essex mansion this week.
The couple, who are expecting their first child together, reportedly locked themselves in a bedroom when ‘four masked raiders broke into their home around 6pm’.
Mark, 38, and Michelle, 37, who were ‘very shaken up’ following the ordeal, allegedly heard their window smash and their security alarm go off before rushing to a bedroom for safety.
It is reported four suspects entered their sprawling property for around a minute but hurried away when Mark started yelling.
According to The Sun, police were alerted via their ‘state-of-the-art security system and arrived at the couple’s Essex mansion within minutes’.
The gang of raiders were reportedly ‘wearing balaclavas and dressed in black fled the scene empty-handed in a getaway car’.
Detectives reportedly believe the gang were professionals ‘looking for a big score’ on the countryside property’s extensive grounds.
Serial burglar Michael Daulat went on a £250,000 crime spree while targeting luxury stores in and around Oxford Street last year, to feed his crack cocaine and heroin addiction.
The 44-year-old was jailed for more than four years in January at Southwark Crown Court, having racked up 100 — mostly theft-related — convictions across 210 crimes in the past 20 years.
Between April and September last year, Daulat threw bricks through windows of high-end shops in Marylebone and Soho to steal designer handbags, clothes and jewellery, the Standard reported. He even used a homemade bamboo fishing rod to nab items through a shop’s letter box.
It was heard in court that his seral burglary last year was worth around £250,000 in stolen goods, damage and lost sales.
Daulat was put away for eight months in 2020 for a burgling shops in the West End, and for 32 months in 2022 after a similar spree.
He robbed expensive boutiques including Varley, Howell, Gannie, Bryceland’s & Co. and Beige.
In December, two burglars were caught on a camera trying to break into a North Harrow home by climbing on the roof.
The black-clad pair, were captured on the Ring security camera in the north London house, scaling a wall into the back garden on December 6 last year.
The masked men can be seen clambering onto the flat roof before one attempts to prise open a window and climb through.
As he does this, a car horn – possibly from a getaway driver – suddenly sounds just seconds before a light inside the house turns on.
Now caught in the act, the masked men start to scramble away as a man inside screams: ‘Oi, oi, oi. Get out. You b*****d.’
Another voice can then be heard saying ‘F*** you’ in the intense doorbell footage.
As the two burglars climb back down from the roof, the chilling 48-second CCTV video then comes to an end.
A Merseyside mother told a story of how her Ring doorbell captured the moments a masked gang of burglars broke into their home in the early hours of the morning and stole her car last September.
Jo O’Farrell feared for her three sleeping children after realising the burglars had infiltrated their Merseyside home before making off with keys to both their house and their Mercedes car which was then stolen.
Police are appealing for information to help track down the gang, who were later spotted racing down the M6 motorway beside another stolen car, an Audi.
Mrs O’Farrell and her husband were alerted to what had happened when Merseyside Police officers called on September 26 at 3.30am, asking where they were – prompted by the sighting of the Mercedes-AMG A-Class alongside the Audi.
The couple looked outside to realise that their car had vanished – then checked for footage from their Ring doorbell camera, which revealed three masked men prowling on the doorway of their Southport home.
Almost half of Brits have no confidence that the police will show up if their home was burgled, a poll revealed last month.
Some 46 per cent of adults said they did not believe a home burglary would be properly investigated, with 49 per cent saying the same for car thefts.
When looking at pensioners, with 54 per cent of those aged 65 or older expressing a lack of confidence in officers attending their property.
And fears are not unjustified, as police failed to solve 94 per cent of burglary cases in 2023/24, according to Home Office figures.
Just 16,912 (six per cent) of 266,215 recorded burglaries resulted in a charge.
In nearly three-quarters of cases police officers were unable to even identify a suspect, and a further 15 per cent ran into evidential difficulties after a suspect was identified.
Reported burglaries have fallen in the past decade, from around 444,000 in 2013/14 to the more than 266,000 in 2023/24.