I tracked my stolen bike down... but the police didn't want to know

We're being urged to ditch our cars, yet Britain is in the middle of a two-wheeled crime epidemic. With 800 bicycles going missing every day, the authorities seem powerless to act, as journalist ANDREW PENMAN discovered when he fell victim...

- ANDREW PENMAN

GIVEN some 300,000 bikes are stolen every year, I never expected to see mine again after it was taken. But having tracked down someone selling it online, before eventually retrieving it myself, I was still astonished when police marked the crime as "no further action".

I had travelled by train from Woking, Surrey, to London, leaving my Norco XFR locked inside the station cycle hub covered by CCTV. This was my regular commute to work. I cycled from home to the station as it's quicker than the bus and I enjoy the exercise.

Knowing stations are targeted by thieves, I'd chosen a relatively cheap bike - around £500 - thinking it wouldn't attract crooks.

How wrong I was.

When I returned to the cycle hub that evening and didn't see my bike, I wondered for a second if I'd left it somewhere else.

Then I saw my helmet, which had been locked to the frame, lying on the ground.

I trudged to the bus stop, having become the latest victim of a theft epidemic that results in around 300,000 bikes being stolen every year - more than 800 every day.

I had bought my bike through the Government's cycle to work scheme, a great idea in theory to encourage people to ride rather than drive. Lockdown also boosted the number of bikes on our streets.

But efforts to get us to leave our cars at home like this are seriously undermined by the two-wheeled crime wave.

Yet I was in for a shock when I reported the theft, which happened last summer, to British Transport Police. They told me that they don't have the resources to check CCTV footage if you've been away from your bike for more than two hours.

"It's the amount of footage and officer's time tied up looking at it," I was told.

So I contacted South Western Railway, which owns the cycle hub, to ask to view the footage myself so I could tell the police precisely when the theft occurred. It refused, citing data protection laws.