Summary
Police.uk data is useful for local safety comparisons, but the street level locations are anonymised and approximate. It should be aggregated to consistent areas and converted into rates before it is used to compare places.
Definition
Police.uk publishes open crime data with categories, dates, approximate locations and related fields through public downloads and APIs. Street level crime points are not exact incident locations. They are moved to anonymous map points to protect privacy, and some incidents cannot be mapped or shown. Safe use means aggregating incidents to stable geographies such as LSOA, MSOA, local authority or policing area, using an appropriate population denominator, and avoiding claims about exact addresses or individual streets based only on map pins.