CAR CRIME Hotspots
Your car is one of the most common targets for criminals, whether they’re trying to break in,
steal the vehicle or simply cause some damage.
Unfortunately, car crime can strike anywhere, but where are you most likely to be targeted? We’ve contacted police constabularies around the UK to find out which towns and cities experienced the most of the following three crimes:
Theft from a
vehicle
Theft or
unauthorised taking of a motor
vehicle
Interfering with a
motor vehicle
Brought to you by
Highest Number of Vehicle Crimes
in the UK
So, where in the UK (outside of London) are you most likely to be targeted by a vehicle thief? The most overall car crimes were committed in Birmingham, with 14,758 combined offences, but when we compare the figures to the number of vehicles on the road, the highest rate of offences was actually in Manchester, where for every 1,000 registered vehicles, 50.66 were targeted by criminals.
-
KEY:
- City
- Registered vehicles
- Theft from a vehicle
- Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle
- Interfering with a motor vehicle
- Total vehicle crimes
- Crimes per 1,000 Vehicles
Lowest Number of Vehicle Crimes
in the UK
On the other hand, out of the 30 towns and cities that we contacted, Luton came out as the safest place to own a car, with just 4.15 crimes per 1,000 registered vehicles.
Just 395 car crimes took place in twelve months in the town, which is around ten times less than in cities such as Liverpool and Bristol.
-
KEY:
- City
- Registered vehicles
- Theft from a vehicle
- Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle
- Interfering with a motor vehicle
- Total vehicle crimes
- Crimes per 1,000 Vehicles
Highest Number of Vehicle Crimes
in London
It’s perhaps no surprise that the capital sees more car crime than anywhere else in the country, but which are the London boroughs where you’re most likely to be targeted?
The worst-hit areas were those in the heart of central London, such as Westminster, which is full of tourists and visitors to the city, as well as commuters and residents, closely followed by the inner-city boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets.
-
KEY:
- Borough
- Registered vehicles
- Theft from a vehicle
- Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle
- Interfering with a motor vehicle
- Total vehicle crimes
- Crimes per 1,000 Vehicles
Lowest Number of Vehicle Crimes
in London
Car crime in London drops as we look out further towards the more suburban boroughs, with Sutton having the least crimes per vehicles in the city (16.6 per 1,000).
Some of the other areas that were among the safest to own a car were the outer boroughs of Kingston upon Thames (18.63), Bexley (21.05) and Bromley (21.14).
-
KEY:
- Borough
- Registered vehicles
- Theft from a vehicle
- Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle
- Interfering with a motor vehicle
- Total vehicle crimes
- Crimes per 1,000 Vehicles
Methodology
Data was sourced from Freedom of Information requests made to the police constabularies of the UK’s 30 most populated towns and cities, requesting the number of crimes committed between 01/04/2018 - 31/03/2019 for the following three offences:
Code 45
Theft from a vehicle
Code 48
Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle
Code 126
Interfering with a motor vehicle
Note that crimes in Scotland are recorded differently and are not directly comparable so have been omitted.
For London, we omitted the City of London, as the extremely low number of vehicles registered in the area made for an unfair comparison.
Number of registered vehicles in each town or city was taken from the Department for Transport (data table VEH0105).
All figures relate to all motor vehicles, including motorbikes and light and heavy goods vehicles, not just cars.
Brought to you by
Find used cars on finance from Ford, Volkswagen and more with ChooseMyCar
Have bad credit? As bad credit car finance specialists ChooseMyCar can help