The End of the Road
Stolen Bikes UK (and FindThatBike/CheckThatBike) were setup when I had my own bike stolen as a hobby primarily aimed at getting my own bike back. It morphed into this project that has I think achieved it's goals in hitting bike thieves where it hurts and helping spur in...
Metropolitan Police Release Stolen Bike Data
The Metropolitan Police force has been a huge target for our campaign to lobby police forces to release information about stolen bikes, simply due to almost 20% of. Finally after over 2 years of meetings and almost six months of back and forth around a single Freedom of...
I’ve found my bike…. what next?
Fantastic you've found your bike for sale on one of the many online sites but what should you do now to maximize the chance of getting that bike back home. The Basics First things, first. Take some screenshots and notes, just encase the advert is taken down. You reporte...
Surrey Police Fail
So on your average week I'll be contacted by a few people who have been fortunate enough to have found their bike for sale but the police aren't being as helpful as they could be. That's business as usual for me and we have a few tricks up our sleeves to encourage the p...
40,000 stolen bikes and counting
As many of you will be aware we have been campaigning for the last two years to get stolen bike data from the police into public hands, so services like our own Check That Bike! can check against police lists. To the surprise of no one I got nowhere with a softly softly...
London Based? We need you!
As I’m sure you are aware bike theft is a huge problem for cyclists throughout the country and often named as the second biggest reasons cyclists give up (behind Road Safety). In fact with 25% of victims giving up and a further 66% cycling less, 20,000 cyclists would ha...
Insurance vs Real Life by the Statistics
So STW has recently published a snapshot of data from the insurer ProtectYourBubble, as some of the statistics present an entirely different picture to what official statistics actually say I thought it would be interesting to look at how insurance figures can actually ...
Comment Trolls
In Leicester we've been lucky enough for the last two years to have a mayor in power with the stomach to install some cycling infrastructure (even if that infrastructure is a bit of a wet fish), unfortunately this has lead to the usual rants from various drivers about h...
10 seconds to make your bike traceable
Patrick Colquhoun wrote in 1796 in A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis “deprive a thief of a safe and ready market for his goods, and he is undone”, this quote seems like a fairly simple idea but for some reason the trade in stolen goods including bikes seems jus...
Check That Bike! Campaign FAQ
So as part of my campaign I’ve been campaigning for the release of stolen bike frame numbers through the use of open data principles. There are a few frequently asked questions so I thought I’d make a post to address them. [learn_more caption="Don't the police have acce...
Do the police take bike theft seriously?
What follows is just my opinion based on two years of working to tackle bike theft and helping victims get their bikes back. It is not meant to be seen as an attack on any force and is simply a summary based on what I've learnt. I want to say before I get started that t...
Participants needed for study into bicycle theft
We’ve been contacted by one of our readers to ask for help in recruiting participants for a study into bicycle theft. Ryan Dunn, a post-graduate anthropology student at University College London, would like to interview recent victims of bicycle theft for his Master’s d...Read moreBurglars and bike thieves will always be looking to offload their loot on sites like Gumtree and eBay. We urge the public to take precautions when purchasing a cycle from social media sites. Always ask for proof of purchase and meet in a public place.
Richmond MPS put Thief behind bars…
A bike thief who tried to sell a stolen cycle on Gumtree has landed a 12 week prison sentence. On Thursday 31st October Richmond police were alerted by the victim of a burglary that her bike was being sold on Gumtree. The bike, a £500 Specialized Ariel cycle was being a...
Securing Your Bike
If you've just got a new bike it's really important that you take some of the below tips to heart with most new bikes being stolen within 2 years and a vast majority of those never being recovered there is a very real chance that if you don't take action your bike will ...
Registering Your Bike
With most new bike sold being stolen within 24 months, it's really important to take down a few essential details of your bike that will drastically improve the odds of your bike being returned should the worst happen. The minimum of details you should take are Make and...
Nominate us for a BikeBiz Award
I’ve been operating Stolen-Bikes.co.uk (and its sister site findthatbike.co.uk) for just over a year and in that time I’ve seen many bikes returned to their rightful owners (and hopefully many more to come, if yours is recovered please let me know the story as I’m alway...An appeal to local bike shop owners
Please, please.... please stop selling cheap chain/cable locks! In a recent June issue of a magazine aimed at the UK bike industry (shall remain nameless) I was horrified to see that these locks continue to be sold despite not being fit for purpose no matter how you loo...