What’s being stolen where?

Police and insurance companies have released statistics revealing the UK’s crime hotspots.

The worst crime hotspot is London, which tops the list for damage and theft to cars, motorcycles and cycles – but creeps in second for burglary with Nottingham taking the top honour in that department.

Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester also figure highly in all the tables.

For cycle theft, the most popular targets for thieves are university cities like Oxford, Cambridge (who also appears in the burglary Top 10), York, Norwich and Lincoln.

A couple of surprises pop up – the small town of Treorchy in the Welsh valleys is second in the car crime league table behind London. St Alban’s comes in third in the motorcycle crime league. The list compilers give no reasons for these anomalies.

The only conclusions to draw from the listings are that out of the major cities, Birmingham only features once – where Wolverhampton scrapes in at the foot of the motorcycle crime league.

Other than that, although the order changes slightly, it seems the larger the city the higher the placing in the crime league.

These league placings don’t mean that burglary and vehicle crime doesn’t happen anywhere else, just that it’s more likely to happen in a larger city or student area.

To find out how much crime risk threatens your home and vehicles, the official crime statistics for England and Wales are online at the Home Office here with Scottish information available here.

So who is most at risk in any area?

Car crime

According to motor insurer Swiftcover, the most popular cars for thieves are:

• Ford Fiesta

• Volkswagen Golf
• Vauxhall Astra
• Vauxhall Corsa
• Nissan Micra

Motorcycle crime

The Honda SCV 100 Lead is the favourite motorcycle for thieves in the UK for the second year running, according to leading motorcycle insurer Carole Nash.

Burglary

The Home Office says that, although house burglary has reduced by 11% in the past year, the main people at risk from burglars are:

• People moving house

• Students
• The elderly
• People away on holiday

Cycle theft

Only 18% of bicycle thefts in England and Wales are from on the street – the rest are from garages and gardens. The most common places other than home to have your bike stolen are on a university campus or at a railway station.

Crime statistics are important to insurance companies because the crime rate in the postcode area of you home influences the cost of your contents, car and motorcycle insurance. Often, bicycles are covered by an optional add on to contents insurance – probably due to the wide variance in bike crime.

A good place to check out key facts about the neighbourhood where you live is a web site called Up My Street that collates data about crime, schools and local councils.
Just punch in your postcode for a profile of your neighbourhood.