The Past & The Present

I founded Stolen Bikes UK in February 2012 after my own bike was stolen in a burglary, disappointed with the police response (case closed in 48 hours, no CCTV followed up) I took matters into my own hands and created a quick way to spread the word and an easy way to check Gumtree/eBay at the same time. The service grew quickly as more people started using it to successfully recover their pride and joys, even my own was spotted in London but unfortunately the Met didn’t act fast enough.

In August 2013 I founded a new tool called “CheckThatBike!” which aims once and for all to destroy the market that has allowed bike theft to become so rampant in the UK and other countries. Essentially a search engine for frame numbers I called on the police to enable me (and other developers) to perform national checks against their records. Those calls were echoed by over 5,000 like minded cyclists and won the support of the Open Data Institute in the form of a £40,000 non-equity investment.

Despite the public support, various negotiations and meetings the police have to date declined to hand over the data, perhaps down to risk aversion or perhaps down to something more sinister I cannot begin to comprehend their reasoning.

I do however still believe in the cause and continue to fight for the public’s right to freely check if what they are buying is stolen or not.

The Future

CheckThatBike! remains my focus as it is a service that holds the potential to turn the tide, much like a similar system did in the Netherlands (cutting bike theft by almost half in 3 years).

Thanks to recent amendments in the Freedom of Information Act, I have instructed a specialist solicitor to “persuade” a high profile force to hand over the data. The first request has been refused (not unexpectedly) but the appeal has been raised and we will take this as far as it needs to go.

Once a force provides the data and we can demonstrate the advantage it is hoped that other forces will open up to the idea (helped by the demonstration that their hands can be forced if need be) and we can finally after a years’ worth of meetings and negotiation get down to the business of fighting theft.