Will the police treat metal theft seriously enough?

Today Zurich announced that metal theft from empty properties had caused a 2,500% increase in the cost of insurance claims since 2004.

Zurich said the damage caused by thieves attempting to get to the metal is the biggest headache for property owners, and reported that it frequently sees metal theft claims where the damage caused is almost 20% of the total value of the whole property.

The insurer’s findings are another reason, if more are needed, for tighter regulation of the scrap metal sector. Selling stolen scrap metal is profitable, and thieves have little regard for the damage and disruption they cause by stealing.

Holes exposed in proposed new bill

The Scrap Metal Dealers Bill promises to be the antidote to the disease. The proposed new laws will introduce compulsory licensing for scrap metal dealers, allow heavy fines for transgressions, and give the police and local authorities greater enforcement powers.

But the new proposals will only be as effective as police forces’ willingness to enforce them. Police forces as a whole have suffered budget cutbacks from spending cuts brought in after the 2010 general election, meaning they have had to prioritise dealing with more serious crime categories above others.

Insurance fraud is a case in point, where the declining police appetite to tackle the problem led to insurers funding a specialist police unit, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, out of their own pockets.

On the case

Fortunately, metal theft is higher on the police’s radar. As so much metal is stolen from railway lines, the British Transport Police are heavily involved in tackling the issue. The biggest police force in the country, London’s Metropolitan Police, also set up the Waste and Metal Theft Taskforce to help identify and gather evidence on metal thieves.

Metal theft also causes more public outrage than insurance fraud, partly due to frequent press reports of metal thieves striking emotive areas such as churches and war memorials, and causing transport disruption by pinching cables from train tracks. This will ensure it is always on police agendas.

Hopefully the new act, enforced by police forces willing to take metal theft seriously, will be enough to solve the problem.