Fudged car crime figures

The true scale of vehicle crime is being grossly underestimated by the authorities, because car key theft is ignored in statistics.

Despite now being widely regarded as the most common and often only way to steal a modern vehicle, police are logging car key theft as burglary, as breaking into a house to steal the keys in the first place is technically the primary crime. So the most recent data issued by the Office of National Statistics, which showed there were 92,057 vehicle thefts in 2011/12, is a huge underestimate.

Auto Express called the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers to source statistics for the number of burglaries where car keys were stolen, to try to calculate the true extent of the problem in the UK. However, both said these figures were unavailable without digging out the originally crime reports in each individual case.

A 2009 parliamentary question to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith revealed 18,500 cars were stolen via car key theft in 2008 – but that is the last time statistics for the crime were made available.

Roger Powell of vehicle history checker MyCarCheck.com, said that while crime statistics appeared to have remained static "the way they are compiled can hide the true extent of the problem".