Surrey Police have this week announced that they will be deploying extra patrol teams and neighbourhood officers throughout January in an attempt to curb the rise of the theft of sat navs and catalytic converters from transit vans. For the last few months the thefts have been occurring on Friday and Saturday nights.

During the last five months the police have recorded a 7% decrease in vehicle crime compared to 2010, but report sat nav thefts have gone up 2% while thefts of catalytic converters have increased by 5%. Fixed Police Notices which contain crime prevention advice for motorists will be put on commercial vans in the hot spot areas or where vehicle crime has recently taken place. Thieves are targeting catalytic converters because of their scrap metal value. As a result, the risk of theft of catalytic converters is on the increase again and there has been a noticeable increase in the number of companies claiming on their transit van insurance policy.

It takes a trained mechanic up to three hours to remove a converter. However, thieves have been seen taking them within seconds because they have no regard for the vehicle’s condition afterwards. The converter helps to reduce emissions coming out of the van and they have a honeycomb construction inside which contains small amounts of precious metals including gold and platinum. It is this that attracts the criminals.

Inspector Richard Mallett said: “Having your van stolen or broken into can cause a great deal of expense and inconvenience and can push up insurance premiums. They simply do not care what the impact is of taking something which they get relatively small amounts of cash for. One of the saddest facts about this is that for a few pounds at the scrap dealer, people will cause hundreds of pounds of damage and disruption to someone’s everyday life.”