London’s murder rate lowest in decades

Mugurel Nica, 51, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday 1 October at Southwark Crown Court, for murdering his wife Ana Maria Murariu at their home in Perivale in February. She died at the scene as a result of her stab wounds.

The figures tell a much better story than the political debate would have us believe

London’s murder rate is lower than it has been in decades. There have been various reports published over the past few months: the Mayor of London’s office published figures at the beginning of September showing there had been the least number of homicides in the period June – August than there had been since 2018.

The data company Statista published figures in August showing the number of homicides recorded by the police in London in 2024 / 25 was the lowest figure for ten years.

Now political journalist Fraser Nelson, former editor of The Spectator magazine, has taken a good long look at as many figures as he could get his hands on and come up with the conclusion that London may now be experiencing the lowest number of murders in at least 30, perhaps 40 years.

‘One of the most potent myths in British public life is that crime is spiralling out of control’, he writes: ‘Knife attacks, gangs, TikTok brawls: the imagery is vivid, the anecdotes endless’.

Yet, he says, the images are misleading, and according to Statistica, the homicide capital of the UK is not London, Manchester or Merseyside, but Lincolnshire.

(L) Police have launched a murder appeal following the fatal assault of 75-year-old John Murray at his home in Chiswick last year. (R) Police have launched a murder investigation after Andrew Farmer was attacked at Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith by another patient. He died of from injuries a week later.

The murder rate has been published monthly by the Metropolitan Police since 2003, but Fraser has taken his research further back than that, examining the paper records of the Metropolitan Police covering 1891 – 1966, held at the national archives at Kew, and the Home Office Criminal Statistics files from then on.

Along the way he encountered varying definitions of what counted as ‘London’ and what counted as ‘murder’, which means the statistics are not quite as easy to interpret as you might imagine they would be.

‘Murder’ and ‘homicide’ aren’t the same, for example. A homicide is a killing, and the category includes manslaughter and infanticide, whereas ‘murder’ requires intent to kill.

But he concludes:

‘The emerging picture is this. London’s homicide count rose through the post-war decades, peaking in the early 2000s. Since then, despite occasional spikes, it has trended sharply downwards… and now, in 2025, the twelve-month rolling total has dipped below 100’.

Six people, five men and a teenager (who cannot be named for legal reasons) sentenced to a combined 167 years in prison on 5 September at the Old Bailiey for the murder of 21-year-old Janayo Lucima. In court the killing was described as a “planned and organised execution” believed to be linked to a dispute over drugs. Janayo was killed by a single bullet when he opened the front door of his house in West Kensington. Top: Janayo Lucima. Bottom: Khuder Al-Kurdi (23), Muktar Said (24), Mohammed Mansaray (18), Issa Siteri (19), Yusuf Muhudin Abdi (19)

Fraser Nelson also says this squares with knife attack data. Though this too is widely thought to be spiralling, he says the public’s reporting of crime is improving, so the numbers are going up, making it appear to be getting worse when it isn’t.

He goes to NHS hospital data for a reliable source of how many people have been wounded or killed in knife attacks. ‘Anyone admitted for assault, or wounding by a sharp object (ie. knife) is recorded as such… like murder, they show a sharp drop from the 2018 high’.

The trend suggests we are likely back to – or below – the murder counts of the 1970s.

‘Whatever else is going wrong in Britain, the capital’s murder rate is going right’.

Read his full article here, which includes a brief history of London murder:

On the case of London murder – Fraser Nelson’s notebook

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar