Burglary capital of the UK: London contains 14 of the nation’s top 20 burglary hotspots
Houses in London are burgled more than in any other UK city, with 14 of the capital's postal zones coming in the top 20 for burglary claims over the past two years.
Using its burglary claims tracker, comparison site MoneySuperMarket measured the proportion of home insurance claims that were burglary-related over the period. 2.68m home insurance quotes from across the UK were analysed for the study.
Top of the list came the postcode RM8, which is in Dagenham, with 55 claims out of 1,000 being burglary related. This was followed closely by Gants Hill, also in North Est London.
In fact, Greater London’s eastern postcodes dominated the top claim spots for burglaries, with Hornchurch, Cockfosters and Woodford Green all appearing in the top 20. More surprisingly, the affluent area of Teddington in south west London also appeared on the list.
Beyond London, Yorkshire lodged by far the highest proportion of burglary complaints – of the six top postal zones beyond the capital's borders, four were in West Yorkshire and one was in South Yorkshire. The other was Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester.
The graph below shows the top twenty postal zones in terms of burglary complaints per 1,000 complaints received by MoneySuperMarket. Zones in the capital are shaded blue, while those elsewhere are black.
At the other end of the spectrum, places where the lowest proportion of claims were burglary-related were rural Scotland's Dumfries and Lochee, Felixstowe in Suffolk and North Wales' University town of Bangor.
Kevin Pratt, home insurance expert at MoneySuperMarket, said:
Once again London and Greater London postcodes dominate. The research reveals Dagenham is the UK’s top burglary hotspot, with a rate of 55 out of every 1,000 insurance quotes having made a claim in the past two years.Burglars often target urban areas where there’s more hustle and bustle and so less risk of being caught, but not surprisingly they also follow the money, which is why affluent areas such as Teddington and Temple Newsam in West Yorkshire appearing in the top 20 claims hotspots.