Most Britons across the UK think London is an “unsafe” place to live, according to a new poll, but the majority of Londoners disagree.
The recent survey came after Donald Trump claimed there are “no-go areas” in London for the police, and Nigel Farage described the capital as being “in the grip of a crime wave”. Reform UK’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, also branded the city as unsafe.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and the mayor of London Sadiq Khan have refuted these criticisms this week, with statistics showing 2025 as one of the safest in terms of serious violent crimes.
According to a new YouGov poll of 5,674 people surveyed on 9 January, 61 per cent of Britons agree that London is an unsafe place to live, and only 30 per cent view it as a safe place.
However, the majority of London residents (63 per cent) believe the capital is safe, and 81 per cent of Londoners think their local area is safe.
London’s homicide rate per capita is at its lowest in 11 years since records began, according to figures released by the Met Police. In 2025, 97 homicides were committed – an 11 per cent reduction from the previous year.
Last year, the capital also recorded the fewest number of homicides of victims aged under 25 in this century, and 95 per cent of all homicide investigations resulted in a positive outcome.
London’s homicide rate now stands at 1.1 per 100,000 people, which is lower than any other UK city and several global cities.
Sadiq Khan told The Independent: “Last year, something extraordinary happened in London. As the conversation about crime got even louder, London quietly reached the lowest per capita homicide rate in its recorded history. Even London’s harshest critics have to accept this is impressive progress.
“For too many, it will no doubt 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 untruths – painting a dystopian picture of a lawless place where criminals run rampant.”
The London mayor added: “Sorry, Trump and Farage – London is no lawless ‘warzone’. Violent crime is lower than ever.”
According to Metropolitan Police data, violent incidents resulting in injury additionally fell by a fifth, while firearms discharges are less than half what they were seven years ago. Hospital admissions of young people for knife assault also fell by 43 per cent since 2019.
These milestones come despite the population in London having risen by more than half a million since 2014.
Speaking on BBC Newscast on Monday, Mr Khan said: “It’s those that don’t know London who believe this perception and narrative.”
Only 34 per cent of Londoners think the capital is unsafe, and just 15 per cent of residents in London think their local area is unsafe. This is a similar number to the 11 per cent of people nationally who think their local area is unsafe.
Reform UK voters are currently the most likely to think London is unsafe, at 85 per cent.
The mayor was also questioned on the podcast about why only 1 per cent of phone thefts in London result in a charge or conviction, according to police data. Mr Khan responded: “We have seen in the past an increase in mobile thefts in all cities across Europe, including London.”
He said the police are working to shut down these phone snatching gangs and they have doubled the size of the forces deployed in the West End, where phone thefts are commonplace. He claims this has resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in personal robbery and a 25 per cent reduction in personal theft. He added: “I’m not complacent. We’re going to make more progress.”
Twelve years ago, in 2014, 53 per cent of people across the UK thought of London as safe.
