MORE than 43,000 vans have been stolen in the UK since 2016, with a further 117,000 broken into, costing drivers and businesses more than £61.9 million in lost tools and other items.

The figures were obtained by What Car? Vans from all 45 UK police forces under the Freedom of Information Act and the publication’s research also revealed that four-in-10 of all new vans on sale do not come with an alarm as standard.

Analysis of all new vans on sale today by What Car? Vans found just 58% of models come with a factory fitted alarm as standard.

Another 36.5% were found to offer a factory fitted alarm as an optional extra, while 5.5% of vans are not available with an alarm at all – though these tend to be older model iterations soon to be replaced.

Other security features, including remote central locking, were better represented with more than 90% of vehicles featuring the tech as standard, while deadlocks – a locking mechanism that doesn’t use a spring, making it harder to pick – are standard in more than 80% of vans on sale*.

The lack of alarm technology helps explain the high number of van thefts in the UK. Between 2016 and 2019, 43,909 vans were stolen across the UK, according to the figures sourced by What Car? This equates to more than 30 vans a day.

The worst area for van thefts was London, with 14,263 vans stolen in the four year period, while 44,742 were broken into by thieves.

Across all police forces, van thefts rose by 8.21% between 2017 and 2018. Theft figures for the first half of 2019 suggest another year of rising statistics, with more than 8,200 vans stolen in the first six months of last year.

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