New data reveals a significant milestone for public safety in the capital, with the number of murders in London during 2025 falling to its lowest level in more than a decade. The figures provide a powerful counter-narrative to claims of a lawless city and are being hailed by both the Metropolitan Police and Mayor Sadiq Khan as evidence that their strategies are working.
A Closer Look at the Homicide Figures
The Metropolitan Police's accurate homicide data, which dates back to 1997, shows that 97 murders were recorded in London in 2025. This is the second-lowest absolute number on record, just above the 95 recorded in 2014. However, given London's population has grown by an estimated half a million people to 9.09 million, the 2025 homicide rate of 1.07 per 100,000 people is actually lower than the 1.11 rate in 2014, making it a record low in terms of prevalence.
The decline in violence is particularly stark among younger Londoners. Murders of people aged 25 or under plummeted from 54 in 2019 to just 18 last year. For teenagers, the number fell from 30 in 2021 to eight in 2025. This trend is supported by NHS data, which shows a 29% drop over five years in the number of people admitted to hospital with stab wounds, falling from 1,350 to 955.
The Strategies Behind the Decline
In an interview, the Met's head of homicide, Commander Paul Brogden, emphasised that police have not simply "arrested their way" out of the problem. A key development has been the force's enhanced ability to exploit data from mobile phones over the last four years, improving intelligence on key individuals and their associations. The Met has also focused more intently on drug dealers, whose trade is inherently violent, leading to more seizures of guns and knives.
However, Brogden was clear that preventative work has been crucial. This coincides with Mayor Sadiq Khan establishing a Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) for London in 2019, loosely modelled on a successful Glasgow initiative. The VRU works to understand the root causes of violence and repair social fabric damaged by austerity, for instance by deploying youth workers.
One VRU intervention has shown staggering results: placing youth workers in police custody centres to engage with individuals as they face charges has achieved a 90% success rate in diverting them from further offending within a year of the intervention.
Political Context and Future Challenges
The positive data arrives amid a political landscape where London is often a target for claims of being crime-ridden. For Khan, who faces local elections where Reform UK is campaigning on a message of out-of-control crime, the figures validate his more thoughtful, community-focused approach over coercive tactics like widespread stop and search.
For Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, the figures help build a narrative that the scandal-hit force, only recently out of special measures, is on a path back to competence. Despite this progress, both remain at the mercy of events. Public perception is also shaped by more common crimes like robbery, burglary, and car theft, where the Met's performance has been less consistent, even as it maintains a strong solve rate for homicides.
The dramatic fall in London's murder rate offers a complex but hopeful story. It suggests that a combination of smarter policing, focused on intelligence and key drivers of violence, coupled with long-term, preventative social investment, can yield tangible results in making a global city safer.
