Seven in ten car thefts not attended by police

15 Apr 2024

EMBARGO: 22.30 Monday 15th April

Over seven in ten (72%) of car theft incidents went unattended by police in 2023, new data uncovered by the LiberalDemocrats has revealed.

The explosive new figures were found through a series of Freedom of Information requests submitted by the party to all police forces in England, with 23 providing full responses.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Conservative Government to urgently produce a strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives and ensure crimes like car thefts are properly investigated.

The data reveals that a staggering 30,900 car theft incidents had no police officer attending the scene of the crime in 2023 - accounting for 72% of all cases. The number of unattended incidents had also risen dramatically compared to previous years, up 32% from 2021 figures which saw 22,979 unattended car theft incidents. This shocking data comes just months after the latest Home Office statistics revealed that three in four car theft cases went unsolved in the year ending September 2023.

Cambridgeshire was the worst performing police force, with a shocking 1,156 incidents of car theft going unattended, accounting for 90% of all cases. Bedfordshire followed closely behind, with 88% of incidents going unattended.

The Liberal Democrats said the figures show the Conservative government needs to get a grip after consistently failing to tackle the shortage of detectives. The latest Home Office workforce statistics show that between 2022 and 2023, 210 officers were cut from local investigation teams. This is on top of a 2021 estimate by the National Police Chiefs’ Council that there was a national shortfall of almost 7,000 detectives.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to urgently draw up a national recruitment, training and retention strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives. This follows previous calls by the party to restore proper community policing, so officers have the time and resources they need to focus on responding to neighbourhood crimes like car theft.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

“These figures are shocking and show the government is failing to get a grip on the car theft epidemic across the country.

“No wonder the vast majority of car thefts are going unsolved if officers aren’t even showing up at the scene for most of these cases. Having your car stolen is a traumatic experience, but knowing that the criminal will get away with it and the police won’t turn up makes it even worse.

“Time and again, Conservative ministers have sat on their hands as police forces are left without the resources they need to get the basics right on solving crime.

“These failings cannot be ignored for a moment longer. The Conservative Government must finally produce a strategy to tackle the shortage of detectives.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

This data was uncovered by a FOI to all 39 police forces in England, of which 23 provided full responses. Their responses, which can be accessed here, provided the following data:

How many incidents of theft of a motor vehicle were reported to your force in the following calendar years: 2023, 2022 and 2021.
How many of those reports resulted in an officer attending the scene in the following calendar years: 2023, 2022 and 2021.

Data on "Local Investigation" police officers, broken down by police force, can be found here. Source: Home Office, Police workforce open data tables.

A 2022 Police Foundation report, available here, reported the NPCC’s estimate that “In 2021 there were 6,851 fewer Professionalising Investigation Programme Level 2 (PIP2) accredited investigators in post than was required, up from a shortfall of 4,974 in 2020.”