Local authority district: Cardiff

Reporting month: December 2025

Cardiff - Local Authority District

This briefing covers the local authority district boundary.

Executive Summary

• Monthly incident snapshot for December 2025: 70,978.
• Rolling 12-month total: 236,996.
• LAD baseline comparator is missing in this cycle.

Brief type: summary. Data sufficiency mode for this briefing: MEDIUM.

Key Metrics

Monthly Snapshot & Annual Context

Month-on-month direction is downward at -14.5%, which frames immediate pressure but does not by itself establish persistence.

Rolling 12-month incidents total 236,996, giving annual context for this monthly movement.

Missing signal: LAD rate comparator.

How This Area Compares With The Wider Local Authority

Missing signal: LAD comparator.

Missing signal: Baseline position.

What This Means Locally

Cardiff recorded 70,978 incidents in December 2025. Recorded incidents decreased by 14.5% compared with the previous month. Rolling 12-month context is 236,996 incidents across 12/12 months.

Violent Crime accounted for 35.2% of recorded incidents this month. LAD baseline comparison is not available for this cycle. This baseline delta helps separate local pressure from wider authority-wide movement in the same reporting month.

Signal sufficiency is medium for this summary. Use the next monthly release to confirm whether this change persists.

Coverage note: rolling context currently uses 12/12 stored months, and comparator rates are LAD-normalised for population context. This keeps small-area swings comparable to the wider authority frame.

Data Sources & Methodology

This report uses the official government small-area boundary (Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA)) and preprocessed official crime data snapshots.

Data is sourced from official UK police releases and processed by Area-IQ.

Rates are adjusted relative to the wider Local Authority population.

Interpretation protocol: first read volume and direction, then compare with rolling context, then check baseline position, and finally review data-quality flags before drawing conclusions. This sequence is intentionally conservative and is designed to avoid overstating short-term volatility. Reported incidents reflect recorded events and timing of updates, so one cycle should not be treated as a final statement on long-run local safety conditions.

Recommended review cadence: compare this briefing with the immediately preceding cycle, then with a rolling annual view, and then with the next published cycle before making structural decisions. Repeated movement in the same direction is generally a stronger decision signal than a single-month outlier, especially when category and comparator signals are incomplete.

Data sufficiency mode for this report: MEDIUM.

Technical metadata

• Primary area code: W06000015
• Source series: POLICE_API_LAD_AGG_FROM_LSOA

Related Intelligence

• Crime profile for this area - Compare this briefing against the broader area context.
• How this crime data is calculated - Understand methodology and caveats behind these signals.
• Latest local crime briefings - Cross-reference nearby or recent intelligence updates.
• Wider Cardiff crime overview - Compare local movement against the wider authority context.

FAQ

Understanding The Data

Summary readings combine monthly movement and annual context to keep interpretation balanced.

In this summary view, the LSOA boundary provides a consistent local unit for monthly and annual indicators.

The LAD comparator provides wider-area context so local pressure can be read against authority movement.