How to beat the bicycle thieves

Uninsured riders pay the price as crooks capitalise on a shortage of cycles

Saturday April 10 2021, 12.01am, The Times

Sylwia Radomska and her daughter Natalia, whose bikes were stolen

Saturday April 10 2021, 12.01am, The Times

It’s common for Sylwia Radomska, 42, and her daughter Natalia, 13, to encourage each other to go on 100km bike rides and enter local cycling races. They were heartbroken when their bicycles were stolen from their garden shed in Uxbridge, west London, last year.

“Natalia was crying. It was her favourite bicycle, she’d won so many competitions on it,” said Sylwia, a teacher, whose carbon Planet X road bike was taken along with Natalia’s Voodoo mountain bike, which had been signed by Sir Bradley Wiggins. They were worth about £1,000 each. Their home insurer paid about £650 in total for the two bicycles, once Sylwia had paid an excess of £450.

“I had valued them much lower to keep my premiums down,” she said. “I didn’t think a theft at home would ever happen.” The family have put up security cameras and added an extra lock to the garden shed, which contains 12 bikes belonging to Sylwia, her husband and their two children, Natalia and Nikola, ten.

A shortage of bikes in shops and the increased interest in cycling during the pandemic have driven a surge in cycle thefts over the past year.

Data from Halifax Home Insurance shows that there was a 13 per cent increase in bicycle theft, loss and damage claims between 2019 and 2020. In June and September there was a 34 per cent and 44 per cent increase in claims respectively when compared with the same months the year before. The biggest increases in thefts were in Greater London, the North West and the South East, Halifax said.

About 90,000 bikes are stolen each year in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In the year to March 2020, 9 per cent were stolen from inside people’s homes, about half from sheds or garages and 6 per cent from the street, the ONS said. In 81 per cent of cases the victim was emotionally affected by the theft, although 7 per cent saw it as “something that happens”. Last year 74,573 bikes were reported as stolen to police in England and Wales.

Bikmo, a specialist bike insurer, this week launched an online tool that riders can use to locate and so avoid theft hotspots using police data. The heat map, available at bike-theft-map.bikmo.com, shows that the City of London has the highest rate of bike theft, with 6,345 thefts per 100,000 residents, compared with the national average of 28 per 100,000 people.

Thieves are capitalising on the demand for bikes, which have become more difficult to buy since the pandemic began. The production of bikes has been disrupted as factories have closed, particularly in Asia, where many frames are built. Shops have been running out of stock and the price of second-hand bikes has been increasing.

Used bikes fetch £306 on average on eBay, according to sales figures from the auction website covering September 2019 to August 2020.

“One year on from lockdown the boom for bikes doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and bike retailers and manufacturers are still struggling to keep up with demand,” said Tim Downes, a senior claims manager at Halifax Home Insurance. “The fact that many are still struggling to get their hands on a new set of wheels is leading to a spike in claims.”

It is possible to include bicycles in a home contents insurance policy but many insurers cap the amount at a few hundred pounds. If your bicycle is worth more, it’s often necessary to go to a specialist insurer such Bikmo, Laka and Yellow Jersey. Check the terms and conditions carefully to ensure your policy covers everything you need.

Cover for a £3,000 bike would usually cost between £100 and £300 a year but unlike home insurance, a policy should cover extras, such as if the bike is damaged while you are out riding with friends or racing.

Many riders struggle to justify the cost and instead choose to self-insure, by saving in a pot money that would otherwise go towards premiums, or hope that they don’t lose or damage their bike.

Duncan Bryson, 48, was left without a means of getting to work when his two bikes, a B’Twin and a Cervélo, were stolen from his personal locked shed within a metal-gated communal garden. One day, while Duncan was teaching at school, thieves stole the Cervélo and the wheels from the B’Twin. The next day they returned for what was left of the B’Twin and some leftover bicycle components.

“My Cervélo is very unique and I’d hope that anyone trying to buy it would ask questions about where it came from,” said Duncan, from Camberwell, southeast London. He has told bike shops in the area to look out for the frame and has registered it online. On the website stolenride.co.uk victims of theft can upload pictures and details of their stolen cycle, which are then publicised on Twitter and Instagram. And it’s essential that you report a bike theft to the police so that they know to look out for it if it is recovered.

Duncan says that his B’Twin was worth about £1,000 and the Cervélo more than £1,500 but that the emotional impact was worse than the financial loss. “My friend sold me the Cervélo as he wasn’t using it much. Unfortunately he’s now very ill and was gutted to hear about the theft.”

Members of Brixton Cycles Club, to which Duncan belongs, raised £605 for him to put towards replacing the stolen bikes. “I was touched by everyone’s generosity — I’ve always thought insurance was a waste of money,” he said.