Warrington Town Centre Crime: 475 Reports in August, Down 6%

Police recorded 475 crimes and anti-social behaviour reports within a mile of Market Gate in August 2026. That is 28 fewer than in August 2025, a fall of about 6%. It is almost exactly the same as July, which had 474.

The figures are Cheshire Constabulary’s street-level data for August, the latest month published on police.uk. We counted every record the police.uk data service returns for a one-mile radius around Market Gate, for each of the last 13 months. The area takes in the town centre, Bank Quay, Bridge Foot and the streets just north towards Orford.

The month in numbers

• 475 reports in August, one more than July.
• 430 were crimes. The other 45 were anti-social behaviour.
• August 2025 had 503, so the town centre is a little quieter than a year ago.
• June 2026 was the busiest month of the 13, with 521. January was the quietest, with 388.
• 5,385 reports in the 12 months from September 2025 to August 2026.

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The shape of the year is uneven rather than a smooth curve. Totals dipped below 410 in October, November and January, then jumped to 506 in March. They stayed around 500 from May to June before settling at about 475 in July and August.

What was reported

Violence and sexual offences were 197 of the 475 reports, about two in every five. Police.uk puts assault, harassment, stalking and sexual offences in this one category, so it covers everything from a minor scuffle to very serious crime.

Here is how the main categories compare with July and with August last year:

The changes worth noting:

• Public order offences rose by 38% on a year ago, from 56 to 77. This category covers behaviour that causes fear, alarm or distress. It is the one clear rise in the table.
• Bicycle theft fell from 25 to 4. It was 7 in July. Across the full 12 months, 81 bikes were reported stolen within the mile.
• Vehicle crime fell from 19 to 11.
• Drug offences fell from 36 to 25. Drug figures depend heavily on how often police stop and search, so a fall can reflect less proactive policing as much as less dealing.
• Shoplifting was 29, below July’s 37. It has swung widely this year, from 17 in February to 49 in March.

Where the reports cluster

Police.uk does not publish 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, and “Nightclub” is not a particular venue.

The busiest points in August were:

• “Shopping Area”: 47 reports, up from 36 a year ago. The mix was 16 violence, 11 public order, 7 shoplifting and 5 anti-social behaviour.
• “Supermarket”: 27 reports, up from 15. Twelve were shoplifting.
• Bridge Foot: 20 reports, double the 10 in August 2025. Eleven were violence and six were drug offences.
• “Nightclub”: 16 reports, the same as a year ago. Seven were violence.
• Tilley Street: 13 reports, up from 5. Nine were violence.

One month is not a trend. We will look at these points again when September’s figures are published.

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 430 crimes:

• 222 were still under investigation.
• 80 were closed as “unable to prosecute suspect”.
• 69 were closed with no suspect identified.
• 44 were awaiting a court outcome.
• 13 were dealt with by a local resolution.
• 2 were closed because formal action was not in the public interest.

Anti-social behaviour reports carry no outcome in the data.

What it means for you

• Check your own street. The police.uk crime map lets you search by postcode and month, using the same data we used here.
• Report what you see. Cheshire Constabulary takes non-emergency reports online or on 101. Call 999 if a crime is happening now. Shoplifting and anti-social behaviour are only counted when someone reports them.
• Lock your bike anyway. Thefts are well down on last August, but 81 were still reported within a mile of Market Gate over the past year.
• Driving into town? Our Warrington parking guide lists the car parks and what they cost, and our roadworks page has this week’s closures.

How we did this

We queried the police.uk data service for all street-level crime and anti-social behaviour within one mile of Market Gate (latitude 53.3900, longitude -2.5967), 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 town centre and nearby streets only, not the whole of the Warrington borough.

Sources

• police.uk data service, street-level crimes and outcomes for Cheshire 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.