The Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) have relaunched their campaign against motorcycle theft , after finding that the Metropolitan Police couldn’t tell them how many motorcycles are stolen in London each year.
This is because the figure isn’t recorded separately from other vehicle theft, so to find out, the force would have to manually check almost 100,000 individual theft records.
MAG says that’s symptomatic of a bigger problem – nobody is properly tracking motorcycle theft, so nobody can be held to account for fixing it. The group is calling for four changes:
This isn’t MAG’s first push on the issue. In 2023 they held public meetings on motorcycle theft in Kent, Hertfordshire, Humberside, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire, followed by a meeting in London in early 2024 with Sophie Linden, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.
Ahead of the 2024 Police and Crime Commissioner elections, MAG also asked every candidate to sign a pledge committing to try to halve motorcycle theft in their area within four years, and to publish regular updates on their progress.
The new campaign is called ‘Still There in the Morning’ and is backed by fresh evidence MAG have gathered over the past year:
“We asked the Metropolitan Police how many motorcycles are stolen every year, and in writing, they told us they couldn’t say,” said Colin Brown, MAG’s Director of Campaigns and Political Engagement.
“You can’t fix a problem nobody is counting. Motorcycle theft has flared up as a national talking point every few years for over a decade, and every time it’s the same pattern: a bad summer, a police operation that runs hard for a few weeks, then fades.
“We’ve spent the past year building the evidence instead, and we intend to keep building it until something structural changes.”
MAG is now looking for volunteers – one per police force area – to lobby their local Police and Crime Commissioner directly, and are inviting existing local anti-theft groups to sign up to a new national directory.
The group also plan to survey every Police and Crime Commissioner in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in early September. You can find full details of the new campaign, called “Still There in the Morning,” on the MAG website .
Motorcycle theft still affects far too many bikers and it can feel at times like getting more than an incident number for insurance is difficult. It’s great to see MAG putting this back on the agenda nationally.
Ben Clarke began riding (legally) at 21-years-old when he passed his direct access one month before shipping his Yamaha XT660 R to Miami and embarking on a 13,500-mile tour of the USA and Central America. He's worked at MCN for the last six years, riding everything from super nakeds and superbikes to small-capacity electrics and scooters across several continents. In more recent years, he's worked closely with the bike kit team to bring you all the latest news and reviews about the bike-related products we all use every day.
Lover of V-twins and big singles, partial to a tour