THEFT from vans is depriving trade professionals of £264million a year, a new study has found.

A survey of 1,037 tradies commissioned by Honcho, has revealed that tool theft costs tradespeople a whopping £5,584 on average each time their van gets broken into.

On average, a tradesperson’s van is broken into every 23 minutes in the UK, and the impact of this on workers’ livelihoods can be devastating. Van theft not only sets workers back financially due to needing to replace the stolen goods, but it also costs them work and income in the meantime.

According to Honcho’s data, having tools and supplies stolen during a van break-in puts the average tradesperson out of work for 30 days.

On top of the cost of replacing tools and materials, the average tradesperson reports that having suffered van theft they lost an additional £5,982 in income as a result of not being able to carry out the jobs they had booked in.

For plumbers and electricians, replacing their stolen tools and materials alone would cost more than two months’ wages.

Even for higher paid trade professionals the impact of having their tools stolen could set them back by approximately six weeks’ wages.

To make matters worse, as many as 89% say that when making a claim on their van insurance, they weren’t covered for the full value of their stolen tools.

An additional 84% also weren’t provided with a courtesy van to get them back on their feet in the meantime, meaning they were unable to work – adding to the loss of earnings as a result of van theft.

Honcho has just launched a specialist van insurance marketplace for tradespeople as part of its app and website, [gethoncho.com/van], to help find the right cover to protect their livelihoods – including tool cover and courtesy vans – and avoid losses of earnings as a result.

The Honcho app can be downloaded for iOS and Android via the App Store and Google Play or from the Honcho website at gethoncho.com/van, and makes it easy for tradespeople to find the right van insurance for them.

Honcho is the first online reverse-auction marketplace for financial services, where consumers receive bids and become the focus of the auction, with insurers competing against each other in real time to win consumers’ custom.

 

 

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