Over 30 vans stolen each day in Britain


New research has found that more than 43,000 vans have been stolen in the UK since 2016, equating to over 30 vans stolen each day.

A further 117,000 vans were broken into in the same period, costing drivers and businesses more than £61.9 million in lost tools and other items.

This is according to an investigation conducted by What Car? Vans, who also discovered that four-in-10 new vans on sale in Britain do not come with an alarm as standard.

Analysis of all new vans on sale today by What Car? Vans found that just 58 per cent of models come with a factory fitted alarm as standard.

Another 36.5 per cent were found to offer a factory fitted alarm as an optional extra, while 5.5 per cent of vans on sale in the UK today are not available with an alarm at all – though these tend to be older model iterations that are soon to be replaced.

Other security features, including remote central locking, were better represented with more than 90 per cent of vehicles featuring the tech as standard, while deadlocks – a locking mechanism that doesn’t use a spring, making it harder to pick – are standard in more than 80 per cent of vans on sale.

The figures of the 43,000 stolen vans were gathered from data from 45 police forces and was put down to the lack of alarm technology by What Car? Vans.

London was statistically the worst area, with 14,263 vans stolen in the four-year period, while 44,742 were broken into by thieves.

Across all police forces, van thefts rose by 8.21 per cent between 2017 and 2018. Theft figures for the first half of 2019 suggest another year of rising statistics, with more than 8,200 vans stolen in the first six months of last year.