Borough Pulse: Richmond scores 55/100 as crime falls and planning rises
23 July 2026 · By Boroughly editorial — AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
Richmond's latest Borough Pulse reading — covering data through May 2026 — puts the borough at 55 out of 100, an improving position relative to a year earlier, where 50 represents steady and higher scores indicate positive movement.
The headline figure is driven by a meaningful drop in street crime: recorded offences near the town centre fell by 10.1% year-on-year, from 3,471 to 3,120, giving the safety pillar a score of 65. That is the strongest contributor to the overall improvement.
Property prices are a softer picture. Council-wide values are down 2.5% year-on-year according to the UK House Price Index, pulling the property pillar to 45 — the weakest of the four components.
The high street pillar sits at 50 (steady), with new business registrations nudging up fractionally: 542 registrations in the trailing 12 months against 539 the prior year. The development pillar scores 59, reflecting an 11.8% rise in validated planning applications (1,168 versus 1,045), which broadly indicates ongoing demand for change of use and extensions across the borough.
The Pulse draws on open data from police.uk, HM Land Registry, Companies House and the GLA Planning London Datahub. Full methodology and the interactive dashboard are at richmond.boroughly.co.uk/pulse.