According to new research as many as 30,000 stolen vehicle cases per year are not even investigated, that’s an estimated £229m worth.
The APU, Accident Exchange’s motor fraud investigation team estimate that £450m worth of vehicles are never recovered, that’s a recovery rate of around 50% between 2009 - 2014.
Neil Thomas, APU’s Director of Investigative Services, said: “If a vehicle owned by a business rather than an individual – such as a fleet vehicle or garage courtesy car – goes missing, frequently the police tend to consider it a civil crime because the business has effectively allowed someone the use of that car.
“Increasing pressure on police forces in the form of budget cuts and overstretched resources means not enough time can be dedicated to the investigation and retrieval of stolen vehicles.
“But it isn’t just companies that are affected by the findings of our study – a proportion of those thefts not looked into will be private car owners too.”
Mr Thomas goes on to explain that the figures are also skewed somewhat by the fact that a lot of the vehicles found or returned may as well not have been due to the condition they were found in.
“The monetary value of the lost vehicles can only be described as the tip of the iceberg, as many recovered vehicles are found damaged or burnt out and subsequently written off. In reality, the loss figure is likely to be higher still.
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