Staffordshire one of the worst affected counties for rural crime
NFU Mutual has published figures today
Last updated 31st Jul 2023
The cost of rural theft in Staffordshire has increased by more than 77% last year.
NFU Mutual, rural insurers, has published its 2023 Rural Crime Report today (Tuesday 1st August), revealing that rural theft cost Staffordshire an estimated £1.7 million in 2022, a rise of 77.1% on the previous year.
The figure follows the national trend as 2022 rural crime costs across the UK shot up 22% to an estimated £49.5m.
NFU Mutual says the rise comes against a background of soaring values and low supply of farm machinery worldwide. Criminal gangs have responded by establishing illicit global markets for farm machinery and technology equipment.
As a result, the UK cost of agricultural vehicle theft reported to NFU Mutual soared by 29% to £11.7m in 2022.
Types of thefts
A survey of NFU Mutual Agents who are based in rural communities across the UK found 70% knew farmers who had been repeat victims of rural crime. And 86% said thieves are cashing in on the limited supply of vehicles and rising prices.
The UK cost of GPS theft increased by 15% to £1.8m in 2022. However, the problem has sharply escalated in the first four months of 2023, with the cost of GPS theft doubling to over £500,000 compared to the same period last year.
The equipment, typically costing over £10,000, is used to guide tractors and combine harvesters. Without it, farmers face severe delays and disruption to harvesting and cultivating work, with long waits for replacement kit.
Quad bikes and all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs) were also top targets for rural thieves. In 2022, quad and ATV theft reported to NFU Mutual cost £3m nationally, a 34% rise on the previous year. These vital vehicles enable farmers to complete work efficiently out in the fields. Continuing supply chain issues are sending prices of second-hand machines higher, making the vehicles an attractive target for thieves.
The UK cost of livestock theft rose 8.7% in 2022, totalling an estimated £2.7m. Claims reported to NFU Mutual regularly involve over 50 sheep being taken in a single raid, which has a devastating impact on breeding lines as well as causing huge worry for farmers about the welfare of the stolen animals.
Claire Radley, Agent at NFU Mutual Skipton, said: “Highly-organised gangs are causing disruption to farming and widespread concern to people who live and work in the countryside.
“Rural theft is changing. It is not only opportunist thieves travelling a few miles, we are now seeing internationally organised criminal activity. These gangs target high-value farm machinery and GPS kits because they can be sold all over the world.
“Many items are stolen ‘to order’ by thieves using online technology to identify where farm machinery is stored and scope out the best way to steal it. They will also spend hours watching the movement of farming families to work out the best time to attack.
“Loss of vital machinery and GPS equipment causes huge disruption to farmers who are already stretched to the limit and replacing kit in the current economic situation can take months, adding additional stress.
“Those targeted by criminals may often second guess themselves in the aftermath of an incident as well as live in fear of repeat attacks on what is not only their workplace, but also their family home.
“That’s why we are working with farmers to help protect their livelihoods, sharing our advice and expertise as the main insurer of the UK’s farmers and offering support.”
For more information on rural crime trends and advice on how to beat rural crime in your area download the report on the NFU Mutual website).
Richard Findlay is a sheep farmer in Westerdale in the North York Moors. He said: "We have in the last few years put up security cameras which are recording all the time. We also have old fashioned deterents like sheep dogs who bark when strange vehicles come near the farm, so we have an old fashioned early warning system.
"We're nervous. There are more people genuinely in the countryside and we're here in the middle of a national park so we get a lot of visitors. We welcome those visitors but you don't know who are the genuine visitors, and who are people looking for easy targets to come back at a later date with a van or a trailer and try and take something.
"My wife and children do a lot of shopping online and so do a lot of our neighbours so there are white vans driving past the entrance to the farm on a daily basis. You never know whether they're genuine delivery vans or people just looking for an opportunistic theft.
"We'd be really stuck without our quadbike. We use it numerous times every day to go around the sheep, check the cattle and things like that. It would make life very difficult. We'd have to start walking a lot more or using other means of transport so there are a lot of things which would interrupt our daily routine significantly.
"We turn our sheep out onto the Moors so we're always nervous whether we'd collect them all back in two or three months time. Some years we do have some which don't turn up and only three or four years ago, we went 20 miles away to pick some sheep up which were ours which had clearly been put there and moved off the Moors.
"There's technology in the pipeline which we could possibly link the sheep to GPS so we could see if they were moved and once it's rolled out it would be whether we could afford it, because we could have 500-600 sheep out on the Moors and this time of year we have nearly 1000, so putting a security tag on every sheep would potentially be the answer but it's whether we could justify the cost."