Thieves steal entire fleet of cars for disabled drivers

Bosses at a Hampshire charity that helps disabled people to drive say they are devastated after thieves stole their entire fleet of modified vehicles.

The thieves broke into the building using considerable force – smashing fire doors, alarms and safes to access car keys.

All five of Wessex Driveability's specialised cars, worth thousands of pounds, were stolen.

Curiously the centre’s standard vehicles were left untouched.

The charity of Approved Driving Instructors (ADIs), Occupational Therapists and Administrators provide ‘fitness to drive’ driving assessments for elderly and disabled people who self-refer or are signposted from the DVLA, Motability, NHS, and Police.

It ensures motorists are safe to continue driving and provides clinical recommendations regarding adapted driving controls and wheelchair accessible vehicles.

Following the break-in at the charity's headquarters in Kent Road, Portswood, staff can no longer help disabled drivers or continue to tackle the large backlog of assessment requests caused by the pandemic.

Rachel Odell, Wessex DriveAbility Centre Manager, comments: "Discovering our fleet of cars had been taken during Monday night was an awful shock to all of us. We are so confused with how and why these modified cars would be stolen as they are specially designed and modified for drivers with restricted mobility.

We are a non-profit charity which is part of a larger national charity called Driving Mobility and are really worried we might not be able to replace certain custom-made controls we had fitted in vehicles.

Now we have no specialist vehicles for assessing, drivers desperate to regain their freedom will potentially have to wait a considerate length of time before we can see them.

This couldn’t have come at a worse possible time with the huge demand on our service right now.

My team and I are absolutely appalled by the selfish nature of this act which will impact so many disabled people and their families"

Laura Holley, Driving Assessor and ADI, concludes: "We might be wrong however it appears that the criminals were scoping our property for some time as they knew exactly where to access keys and at the right time.

Plus, they must have had some knowledge of adapted driving as our cars were fitted with modified steering controls, such as push-pull hand levers for acceleration and braking ¬– these did not seem to hinder them.

We hope the offenders are apprehended quickly for this awful crime.

When you are so passionate about helping disabled people, it is heart breaking for something like this to happen. As we are a charity, funds and time are always limited so this is a massive blow.

If anybody from the local community can help us in anyway, we’d be so grateful."

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