London has been ranked the third least safe student city in the United Kingdom during the Freshers period, according to new research analysing recorded crime across September and October 2025. The capital recorded 11,186 offences in just two months — the largest raw total in the study — equivalent to around 2,389 crimes per 10,000 students, nearly 23 times the rate recorded in top-ranked St Andrews.
The research was conducted by ID Card Centre, a specialist in identity card solutions, which examined police-recorded crime data for universities across the UK during the main Freshers and welcome period. Cities were assessed on total crime, violent crime and antisocial behaviour, all measured relative to student enrolment figures from the 2024/25 academic year. A composite safety score out of 100 was produced for each city, with lower crime rates producing higher scores.
Scotland dominates the safest cities
St Andrews in Fife claimed the top spot with a safety score of 94 out of 100. Just 120 crimes were recorded during the two-month window, a rate of 103 per 10,000 students — the lowest in the entire ranking. The small coastal town, home to the University of St Andrews, recorded only 18 violent offences and 11 antisocial behaviour incidents across the period.
Dundee and Stirling completed an all-Scottish top three, with safety scores of 92.1 and 89.1 respectively. Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland was the highest-ranked city outside Scotland, finishing fourth with a safety score of 85.5 and around 203 crimes per 10,000 students. Edinburgh placed fifth despite recording 1,670 crimes in total — a figure that falls considerably when set against the more than 41,000 students enrolled at the University of Edinburgh.
Among English cities, Oxford performed best, ranking sixth overall with a safety score of 82.7 and approximately 402 crimes per 10,000 students. Durham followed in seventh, while Bangor led the Welsh entries in eighth place. Aberdeen and Aberystwyth rounded out the top ten.
London, Leicester and Bradford bottom the table
At the other end of the ranking, Leicester finished last overall with a safety score of just 9.3. The city recorded 3,114 crimes during the Freshers period, including 915 violent offences and 445 antisocial behaviour incidents. Bradford ranked 46th with a score of 9.4, its 2,523 crimes translating to around 2,123 per 10,000 students — the second-highest student-adjusted rate in the study.
London placed 45th with a score of 10.7. Although the capital’s crime total of 11,186 is measured against UCL’s enrolment for the purposes of the study, the resulting rate of approximately 2,389 crimes per 10,000 students is almost six times Oxford’s figure. The city also recorded 1,494 violent offences and 1,201 antisocial behaviour incidents — the highest ASB count of any city in the bottom ten.
Brighton ranked 44th and Bristol 43rd, with the latter recording 4,320 crimes including 1,187 violent offences. Wrexham was the lowest-placed Welsh city at 42nd, while Belfast — in sharp contrast to Derry/Londonderry’s fourth-place finish — took 41st. Plymouth, Derby and Newcastle completed the bottom ten, each recording between around 1,000 and 1,090 crimes per 10,000 students.
Context and safety advice for students
Ben O’Brien, Managing Director at ID Card Centre, said the findings reflected structural differences between university cities rather than any simple measure of danger. “What this shows more than anything is how different the Freshers experience can be depending on where you go to university. The places at the top are mostly smaller student cities, while quite a few of the big nightlife destinations sit much further down,” he said.
“In a bigger city, students are sharing that space with commuters, tourists, shoppers and a much larger nightlife crowd, so naturally there’s more opportunity for crime to be recorded too,” O’Brien added. He cautioned that the figures cover everyone using city-centre areas, not students exclusively, and that being lower in the ranking does not mean students will have an unsafe experience.
O’Brien highlighted the particular vulnerability of first-year students at the start of term. “Freshers is probably the point when students know their surroundings the least. You don’t necessarily know which route home is best yet, who actually lives in your halls or where you last put your student ID after a night out,” he said, advising students to keep hold of phones and cards, avoid lending access passes, and report missing ID cards promptly.
The findings arrive against a backdrop of sustained concern about crime in and around UK university campuses, particularly during the first weeks of term when students are socialising in unfamiliar environments. Freshers week events, which typically span late September and early October, involve large numbers of young people navigating new cities, often at night, making personal safety awareness a recurring topic for universities and student unions.
Manchester was excluded from the study because Greater Manchester Police did not supply September–October 2025 street-level crime data through the police.uk platform. Scottish cities used Police Scotland ward-level data, which the researchers noted is not directly comparable with the fixed 1.5 km city-centre catchments used for other nations, meaning close cross-border comparisons should be treated with caution.
