Number of motor vehicle theft offences in England and Wales 2002-2024

There were 129,159 motor vehicle thefts in England and Wales in 2023/24, compared with 130,119 in the previous reporting year. Despite recent increases in this type of offence, there were still far fewer vehicle thefts than there were in 2002/03 when there were almost 307,000. This was followed by a steep ten-year decline which saw vehicle thefts reduced to just 70,000 in 2013/14. 

Links with overall crime

The sharp fall in motor vehicle thefts seen between 2002/03 and the mid-2010s, followed by a sudden increase recently tracks a pattern that can be observed in the overall crime figures for the United Kingdom In total, there were approximately 6.66 million crime offences in 2023/24, an increase of over 2.6 million offences when compared with 2013/14. Although this was a higher number of crimes than in the early 2000s, due to population increase, the crime rate for 2023/24 was 89.4, lower than in 2003/04, when the crime rate was 111.1 crimes per 1,000 people. 

Staff and funding cuts to blame?

The recent uptick in overall crime has been sudden and severe enough to catch the attention of the British media. It has not gone unnoticed that this rise occurred following cuts to funding for the police which was then followed by a decline in officer numbers These cuts have since been reversed, and funding for the police has again started to increase, although in other areas of the justice system, such as legal aid, funding has remained at reduced levels, when compared with spending before the mid-2010s.