A report has suggested Brighton is the most crime-ridden place for students to live in the country.

However Sussex Police has rubbished the claims.

Student housing portal and advice service StuRents.com complied a crime ranking for the country’s student cities in which Brighton ranked top with 829 crimes per thousand residents.

However Sussex Police have slammed the report claiming it is a “misrepresentation” of crime in Brighton saying their statistics only cover the city centre and not the main student residential areas.

The police said the statistics do not cover main areas of student housing such as the Falmer Campus along with Moulsecoomb, Bevendean and concentrations along Lewes Road.

Inspector Simon Morgan said: “These figures are extremely misleading as the number of students living in this central area are only a fraction of those within the city and its outskirts as a whole.

“In reality, figures show that were 80 crimes per thousand residents in Brighton between February 2014 and January 2015 compared to 86 in Cambridge and 87.7 in Oxford.

“The city centre has only around 11,500 residents, but around 9,000 crimes are recorded each year as it covers all the main attractions, shops and nightlife.”

The service surveyed 64 university towns and co-founder Michael Rainsford said it showed students normally live in areas with crime rates 2.5 higher than the national average. They ranked Egham in Surrey the safest place for students with only 57 crimes per thousand residents.

Inspector Morgan said: "We have superb working relations with both universities in Brighton and have a dedicated liaison officer for the student community.

“Over the last two years we have experienced incident-free ‘fresher events’ in the city and have driven down occurrences of mobile phone thefts in licensed venues.

“We have received excellent feedback from the students at Sussex University for highlighting the dangers of new psychoactive drugs and continue to strive to make sure the night time economy is a safe and enjoyable place for students to enjoy.

“This has been partly achieved by the use of Safe Space, Safe Havens and the taxi marshalls.”

Factfile

StuRents.com’s rankings of crimes per thousand residents:

Highest Brighton 829.4

Swansea 633.1

Stoke-on-Trent 534.4

Newcastle 519.9

Stockton 484.0

Lowest Egham 56.6

High Wycombe 69.5

Bath 74.4

Falmouth 79.7

Bedford 92.2