But police and council bosses say the figures are wildly inaccurate and have been calculated on the wrong population figures.
The statistics are the work of London based think-tank Reform, which has drawn up crime league tables on overall crime and categories including robbery and burglary based on the number of crimes per 1000 population.
But according to the council, the 136,000 population figure used for Stockport is less than half the actual population figure of 284,000 which inevitably gives the impression crime is far more prevalent than it is.
Detailed
The same report said Manchester was the nation's worst place for robberies and fifth worst in terms of overall crime. Bolton and Oldham were also among the top ten crime hotspots coming sixth and seventh respectively.
But according to police, while the Manchester population figure was close, statistics for the populations of Bolton and Oldham were also hugely inaccurate - about half the actual number.
In their press release Reform said the figures gave a clearer and more detailed picture of crime in local areas and would help the public to hold police in different areas to account. But today Coun Brian Millard, leader of Stockport council, said: "This report is very odd indeed - we need to check it out extremely carefully.
"The statistics do not seem to make sense, they fly in the face of other data, and the fact that the people of Stockport feel safer here than in any other part of Greater Manchester.
"We are particularly puzzled by the population figures used by the report's authors - at first reading we feel the report is flawed and misleading and massively underestimates our population by 47 per cent. With so much doubt about the statistics in this report, it is hard to treat it as a credible document."
Today, police added that the crime hotspot tables were inaccurate because of the inaccurate population figures for Stockport, Bolton and Oldham.
A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said that while the figure for Manchester was close, it did not take into account the massive numbers of people who spent long periods of time in the city working and for leisure. She also stressed that the figures did not take account of the "significant" reductions in crime made over recent years.
Reform is a non-party organisation set up in 2002 to put the case for "radical public sector and economic reform".
nicola.dowling@men-news.co.uk
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Manchester is the 5th worst area for crime! Let's not hear excuses and new ways of looking at statistics and other forms of spin. Our city is one of the most dangerous crime riddled places in Britain. By comparison, the city of Liverpool, which so many of us think of as worse, is better in almost every category per 000 of the population. What is going to be done?
An explanation for the figures given in the report - the crime figures, presumably, are for the whole borough of Stockport (pop. 282,200, 2004 estimate) but the population is from the Office of National Statistics' "Usual Resident Population 2001" census report, which gives populations of urban areas, not local authority areas... this report puts the TOWN of Stockport's population as 136,082, and doesn't include areas such as Hazel Grove, Cheadle, Brinnington etc.
They had the population of Bolton at 139,000...missing a 120,000 people, with mistakes such as this, how can the report be trusted ?
Bloody Right and all!my sister has been robbed twice in six months.Stockport!I'd
rather live in stoke.
Its' a scandal that these stats can be published giving such a misleading impression, even if it were true, what's the point in stigmatising an area?
A "Think Tank" that can't count - this report is a joke. It's a slur on the outlying areas of Manchester. Reform should admit their mistake and issue an official apology.