Perception vs. Reality: Why the Rest of Britain Thinks London is Overrun by Crime

London is seen by the rest of the UK as being a city rife with crime despite statistics showing a decline in incidents, a new report has found. King's College London (KCL) used polling of the wider population and concluded that people overestimate crime in the UK capital.

London has in recent years acquired a reputation for dangerous streets, driven by thefts of mobile phones, which has dented its image as a safe place to visit and work. This has partly been fuelled by Donald Trump’s feud with the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan. The US President claimed there were parts of the capital where police were “afraid to go” because there was “no law and order”.

Mr Khan has pushed back, with his office releasing crime statistics that show London has a murder rate lower than comparable European cities and well below those in the US. The Metropolitan Police has also stepped up operations against street crime, including those carried out by robbers on e-bikes.

The KCL report, which has the title “London has fallen? Misperceptions of crime, race, religion and life in the UK capital”, has found that many people in the UK may share Mr Trump’s view of the city. The polling, which was carried out by YouGov, found that 62 per cent guessed that total crime in London had risen between 2019 and 2025, when it actually fell by 1.4 per cent.

Much of London’s reputation has been driven by videos on social media. Half of the public think London had the highest rate of violent crime of any region in the year to September 2025, when the city had the lowest rate. They also have an inflated view of the risk of crime in London, guessing 40 per cent of Londoners were victims of crime in a single year, more than three times the reality of 12.2 per cent.

Londoners appear to have a different view of their own city, including on its ethnic make-up. The UK public believes the Muslim share of London’s population is 35 per cent, when the reality is 15 per cent. The figure rises to a half among supporters of the right-wing populist Reform UK party. A third of the UK public as a whole believed there were areas where Sharia dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter. In London, 18 per cent believed they exist while two-thirds of Londoners rejected the idea.

However, there are some things the UK public gets right, with 55 per cent correctly believing that London was the worst UK region for theft from a person. The report points out that London’s reputation in the UK is at odds with it topping the World’s Best Cities Index in 2025, run by the consultancy Resonance.

Addressing the report’s findings, Mr Khan said the “gulf between the real London and the false idea of London that exists inside some people’s heads has never been more pronounced”. Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, noted that views of London already fit into the stories people already believe about the city.