Photo: MOTORAL1987 · CC BY-SA 3.0Recorded crime per resident is higher in Cleethorpes than in 98% of UK towns
Violence recorded locally held about level in a year. Out of every 1,000 residents, 62.5 violent and sexual offences and 25.5 incidents of burglary, vehicle crime and damage are reported annually. That puts it at D− for safety, judged on crimes police recorded inside Cleethorpes’s built-up area from September 2023 to August 2026: #58 of 61 in Lincolnshire. Shoplifting runs at 27.6 per 1,000 residents here, against 6.1 in a typical town its size: police recorded 818 in the 12 months to August 2026.
Crimes and reports per 1,000 residents (Census 2021) a year, September 2023 to August 2026.
What stands out about safety in Cleethorpes
Neighbourhood ranks
49% of Cleethorpes’s residents live in a neighbourhood ranked in the highest-crime 20% of England (Indices of Deprivation 2025, crime domain), and 14% in the lowest-crime 30%. Neighbourhood ranks ↓
Written from the police.uk and government data on this page. Figures are crimes police recorded, not convictions.
Cleethorpes: D− for safety, and why
A firm grade. Built on 7,818 graded crimes over three years. The grade adds violent and sexual offences and crimes against homes and vehicles per resident and ranks Cleethorpes against every UK town of 1,000 or more.
Per resident, against all UK towns; beside it, how it compares with towns its size.
What police recorded in the last 12 months
Against the typical town its size, Cleethorpes runs highest on shoplifting (27.6 per 1,000 against 6.1), bicycle theft (1.2 per 1,000 against 0.3) and burglary (6.7 per 1,000 against 2.4).
Show as a table
| Category | In the grade | Reports | Per 1,000 | Typical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violence & sexual offences | Violent | 1,720 | 58 | 30.4 |
| Shoplifting | not graded | 818 | 27.6 | 6.1 |
| Criminal damage & arson | Home & vehicle | 419 | 14.1 | 6.2 |
| Anti-social behaviour | not graded | 404 | 13.6 | 12.4 |
| Public order | not graded | 332 | 11.2 | 5.4 |
| Other theft | not graded | 202 | 6.8 | 4.4 |
| Burglary | Home & vehicle | 200 | 6.7 | 2.4 |
| Vehicle crime | Home & vehicle | 182 | 6.1 | 2.8 |
| Other crime | not graded | 151 | 5.1 | 1.8 |
| Drugs | not graded | 94 | 3.2 | 1.9 |
| Robbery | Violent | 42 | 1.4 | 0.5 |
| Possession of weapons | Violent | 38 | 1.3 | 0.7 |
| Bicycle theft | not graded | 37 | 1.2 | 0.3 |
| Theft from the person | not graded | 19 | 0.6 | 0.3 |
“Violent” is police.uk’s violence and sexual offences (which includes harassment, stalking and assault without injury), robbery and possession of weapons. Anti-social behaviour isn’t a crime category; shoplifting and other theft happen mostly in shops and town centres rather than to residents, so neither counts in the grade.
September 2025 to August 2026, per 1,000 residents. The tick on each bar is the typical (median) town among UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
49% of Cleethorpes residents live in one of England’s highest-crime neighbourhoods
14% of residents live in the lowest-crime 30% of England’s neighbourhoods, and 49% in the highest-crime 20%. The crime domain scores the risk of violence, burglary, theft and criminal damage where people live, so it can read differently from the town-wide rate, which counts crimes where they happened.
Cleethorpes’s residents by the crime decile of their neighbourhood (LSOA, about 1,500 people) in the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (crime domain), where 1 is the highest-crime 10% of England’s neighbourhoods and 10 the lowest.
How Cleethorpes compares with UK towns of 21,000 to 40,000
| # | Town | People | Violent | Homes & vehicles | Shops & theft | Safety |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Heswall Merseyside | 29,082 | 14.3 | 5.5 | 3.8 | A− |
| … | ||||||
| 132 | Spalding Lincolnshire | 30,552 | 39.7 | 13.4 | 15 | C− |
| … | ||||||
| 200 | Workington Cumbria | 21,276 | 59.3 | 22.1 | 21.8 | D− |
| 201 | Accrington Lancashire | 34,897 | 58.5 | 24.8 | 22.3 | D− |
| 202 | Dover Kent | 36,349 | 65.9 | 21.9 | 24.8 | D− |
| 203 | Cleethorpes Lincolnshire | 29,660 | 62.5 | 25.5 | 26.6 | D− |
| 204 | Bilston West Midlands | 34,631 | 58.9 | 29.4 | 26.7 | D− |
| 205 | Thornaby-on-Tees North Yorkshire | 23,352 | 59.3 | 33.4 | 59.7 | D− |
| 206 | Bishop Auckland County Durham | 23,359 | 56.3 | 36.4 | 33.6 | D− |
| 207 | Gainsborough Lincolnshire | 21,899 | 66.4 | 32 | 30.1 | D− |
| … | ||||||
| 210 | Great Yarmouth Norfolk | 28,979 | 105 | 32.9 | 33.7 | D− |
Safety letters rank against every UK town of 1,000 or more; the order here is context only.
Graded crime per 1,000 residents a year, September 2023 to August 2026, counting from the least: towns ranked near Cleethorpes, and others in Lincolnshire.
Crime in Cleethorpes per 1,000 residents
A crime isn’t a victim: one person can report several, and crimes in a town centre often involve visitors rather than residents.
And about 27 burglaries, vehicle crimes or acts of criminal damage, plus 36 shoplifting and theft reports, in the 12 months to August 2026. Each dot is one resident; each coloured dot is one recorded crime.
Police in Cleethorpes identify a suspect more often than across UK towns
No suspect was identified for 62% of Cleethorpes’s burglaries, vehicle crimes and criminal damage, against 69% across UK towns, and for 11% of violent and sexual offences against 19%. Most violent cases close as “unable to prosecute” (60% here), usually because the victim doesn’t support a prosecution. About 9% of violent and 7% of household crimes reached court.
The latest outcome police.uk shows for each crime recorded in the first of the three years (September 2023 to August 2024), so most cases have closed. 2,590 crimes.
Violent crime held steady over the year
“Towns its size” pools all UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people that police.uk covers each month (Greater Manchester has no data).
Rolling six-month rate, per 1,000 residents a year (longer windows for smaller places, where a few crimes swing a month). In the 12 months to August 2026 against the 12 before: violent -3% (towns its size +1%), homes and vehicles +5% (towns its size -2%), shoplifting and theft +37% (towns its size +1%), anti-social behaviour +32% (towns its size -4%).
Lowest recorded crime in Haverstoe, Croft Baker and Sidney Sussex; highest in Sidney Sussex
| Ward | Residents | Violent | Homes & vehicles | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haverstoe | 6,472 | 26 | 17.8 | |
| Croft Baker | 11,223 | 62.8 | 25.2 | |
| Sidney Sussex | 11,965 | 76 | 27.9 |
| At or near | Reports | Mostly |
|---|---|---|
| Car parks | 568 | 40% violent |
| Nightclubs | 545 | 71% violent |
| Supermarkets | 219 | 64% shoplifting & theft |
| Sports and recreation grounds | 96 | 38% violent |
| Petrol stations | 44 | 27% homes & vehicles |
| Police stations | 31 | 39% violent |
A ward’s rate counts crimes where they happened, not where victims live, so Sidney Sussex records 1.5× the violent crime per resident of the rest of Cleethorpes. police.uk places each crime at an anonymous map point; some are named for the kind of place (a supermarket, a car park), and each row adds up every place of that kind in Cleethorpes. We show only these, never streets or homes.
Crimes per 1,000 residents a year by council ward (the part of each ward inside Cleethorpes’s built-up area), September 2023 to August 2026. Beside it, the public places police.uk named most often.
Three people died in collisions on Cleethorpes’s roads in 2021–2025
Police recorded 289 collisions with injuries inside Cleethorpes in five years, in which three people died (1 was a pedestrian). 64 people were killed or seriously injured: 21 on foot and 13 on a bicycle.
That is about what is typical for UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people: at their median rate (0.9 deaths per 100,000 residents a year), a town of Cleethorpes’s size would see about 1 in five years. With numbers this small, a death or two either way changes the picture, so Cleethorpes’s own rate (2.0) is context, not a ranking.
Counting serious injuries too, Cleethorpes had 43.2 people killed or seriously injured per 100,000 residents a year, above the median for UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people (23.8). 33% of them were on foot, against 30% across UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Casualties are counted where the collision happened, not where people lived: a main road through town adds through-traffic, and residents’ own risk on roads elsewhere isn’t here. Seriously injured uses the Department for Transport’s adjusted figures, which even out the police forces’ different ways of recording injuries. There’s no national rate here: more than half of road deaths in England and Wales (58%) happen outside every town’s built-up area. Source: DfT road casualty statistics (STATS19), 2021–2025.
Collisions police recorded inside Cleethorpes’s built-up area, 2021–2025. Described here; not part of the Safety Grade.
Crime in the places around Cleethorpes
| Town | People | Violent | Homes & vehicles | Safety |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleethorpes | 29,660 | 62.5 | 25.5 | D− |
| Humberston and New Waltham | 14,861 | 25.9 | 11 | C+ |
| Grimsby | 85,915 | 69.6 | 32.4 | D− |
| Holton le Clay | 3,823 | 17.3 | 7.1 | B+ |
| Waltham | 6,204 | 16.6 | 6.1 | A− |
| Tetney | 1,536 | 17 | 8.7 | B+ |
| Healing | 3,201 | 20.1 | 8.5 | B |
| Laceby | 3,284 | 24.1 | 11.2 | C+ |
Cleethorpes records more graded crime per resident than 6 of its 7 neighbours; only Grimsby records more. Humberston and New Waltham, 1.8 miles away, records 25.9 violent and sexual offences per 1,000 residents a year (3-year average), against Cleethorpes’s 62.5.
Per 1,000 residents a year, the same three years. Tap a town for its safety page.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Where crimes happen, not where victims live. police.uk places each crime at a point near where it happened. Town centres with shops, stations, a hospital and nightlife record more crime per resident, and residents of nearby villages who come in to shop or go out are part of that count.
- Bigger towns record more per resident. Across UK towns, recorded crime per resident rises steeply with size, more than in the U.S., so a city’s grade sits low against the whole UK. The “towns its size” figures show where Cleethorpes sits among towns like it; they are context and don’t change the grade.
- Points are approximate. police.uk moves each point to the nearest of a set of anonymous map points, so crimes near the edge of the built-up area can fall either side of it.
Questions about safety in Cleethorpes
Is Cleethorpes safe?
Police recorded 62.5 violent and sexual offences and 25.5 burglaries, vehicle crimes and acts of criminal damage per 1,000 residents a year over the three years to August 2026 (police.uk, inside Cleethorpes’s built-up area). That earns a D− for safety: less crime per resident than 2% of UK towns. Among UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people, Cleethorpes has less crime per resident than 4%.
What are the safest areas of Cleethorpes?
By council ward, Haverstoe, Croft Baker and Sidney Sussex record the least violent and household crime per resident: 26, 62.8 and 76 violent and sexual offences per 1,000 a year (3-year average), against 76 in Sidney Sussex.
Is crime going up in Cleethorpes?
In the 12 months to August 2026, against the 12 months before, violent crime held steady, burglary, vehicle crime and damage held steady, shoplifting and theft rose 37% and anti-social behaviour rose 32%. Across UK towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people, violent crime held steady.
Is Cleethorpes town centre safe at night?
police.uk placed 545 crimes and reports at or near nightclubs in three years, 71% of them violent, and Sidney Sussex ward records 76 violent and sexual offences per 1,000 of its residents a year. Over the last two years, violent crime peaked in June and was lowest in February.
What is the most common crime in Cleethorpes?
Violence & sexual offences: 1,720 in the 12 months to August 2026, which in police.uk includes harassment, stalking and assault without injury. Next came shoplifting (818) and criminal damage & arson (419), with 404 reports of anti-social behaviour.
How does Cleethorpes compare with Grimsby?
Grimsby records 69.6 violent and sexual offences and 32.4 crimes against homes and vehicles per 1,000 residents a year, against Cleethorpes’s 62.5 and 25.5, over the same three years.
Sources: data.police.uk street-level crime, 36 months to August 2026, points inside the built-up-area boundary · ONS Census 2021, output areas summed to the ONS 2022 built-up area · MHCLG English Indices of Deprivation 2025, crime domain by LSOA (residents from ONS Census 2021) · Department for Transport road casualty statistics (STATS19), collisions 2021–2025, points inside the built-up-area boundary · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.