Police logged 886 crimes and anti-social behaviour reports within a mile of City Hall in August, up 66 on July but 43 fewer than in August 2025.
Police recorded 886 crimes and anti-social behaviour reports within a mile of Norwich City Hall in August 2026. That is the highest monthly total since August 2025. It is still 43 fewer than in August 2025, a fall of about 5%.
The figures are Norfolk Constabulary’s street-level data for August, published on police.uk. We counted every record the police.uk data service returns for a one-mile radius around City Hall, for each of the last 13 months.
The month in numbers
- 886 reports in August, up 66 on July’s 820.
- 728 of them were crimes. The other 158 were anti-social behaviour.
- August 2025 had 929, so the city centre is a little quieter than a year ago.
- January 2026 was the quietest month, with 731.
- 9,837 reports in the 12 months from September 2025 to August 2026.
Over the 13 months the pattern is clear: highest in late summer, falling through the autumn to a low in January, then climbing again. August 2026 finished below August 2025.
What was reported
Violence and sexual offences made up the largest share by some way: 285 reports, or about a third of the total. Police.uk puts assault, harassment and sexual offences in this one category, so it ranges from minor to very serious.
Against August 2025, the changes worth noting are:
| Category | August 2025 | August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Violence and sexual offences | 296 | 285 |
| Shoplifting | 160 | 144 |
| Anti-social behaviour | 145 | 158 |
| Burglary | 28 | 16 |
| Bicycle theft | 33 | 17 |
| Drugs | 20 | 26 |
| Possession of weapons | 13 | 17 |
Bicycle theft roughly halved on a year ago, from 33 to 17. Burglary fell from 28 to 16. Shoplifting fell by 10% year on year, though it was up from 121 in July.
Weapons possession went the other way, from 13 last August to 17. It was 5 in July. Drug offences rose from 20 to 26. Both figures depend heavily on how often police stop and search, so a rise can reflect more patrolling as much as more offending.
Where the reports cluster
Police.uk does not give exact addresses. Each report is moved to the nearest of a set of anonymous map points, labelled with a street or a type of place. So “Shopping Area” is a point on the map, not a named centre.
The busiest points in August were:
- “Shopping Area”: 78 reports, of which 28 were shoplifting, 22 anti-social behaviour and 15 violence.
- “Parking Area”: 73 reports.
- William Booth Street: 44 reports, up from 18 in August 2025. This is the point just south of the market. Its August mix was 15 violence, 13 anti-social behaviour and 10 shoplifting.
- “Nightclub”: 38 reports, 21 of them violence.
The William Booth Street rise is the biggest change at any single point. One month is not a trend, so we will watch it in September’s figures.
What happened to the cases
Police.uk records an outcome for each crime, but many are still open when the data is published. For August’s 728 crimes:
- 335 were still under investigation.
- 153 were closed as “unable to prosecute suspect”.
- 132 were closed with no suspect identified.
- 87 were awaiting a court outcome.
Anti-social behaviour reports carry no outcome in the data.
What it means for you
- Check your own street. Police.uk’s crime map lets you search by postcode and month, with the same data we used here.
- Report what you see. Norfolk Constabulary takes non-emergency reports online or on 101. Call 999 if a crime is happening now. Shoplifting and anti-social behaviour figures depend on reporting, so a report that is never made is never counted.
- Lock your bike anyway. Theft is down on a year ago, but 208 bikes were reported stolen within a mile of City Hall over the past 12 months.
- Parking in town? Our Norwich parking guide lists the car parks and what they cost.
How we did this
We queried the police.uk data service for all street-level crime and anti-social behaviour within one mile of Norwich City Hall (latitude 52.6285, longitude 1.2925), month by month from August 2025 to August 2026. August 2026 is the latest month the service holds. Counts can change slightly in later releases as forces revise their records. These figures cover the city centre and the inner suburbs only, not the whole of the Norwich City Council area.
Sources
- police.uk data service, street-level crimes and outcomes for Norfolk Constabulary, August 2025 to August 2026, queried on 5 October 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- police.uk crime map for the location anonymisation method.
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