Haul in a good cause

Without funding from private business, the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk would be history. In late 1998, the Desk — set up by Essex Police at the start of 1992 to tackle theft of lorries and their loads — was on the verge of being scrapped. Essex Police, having received far less Government funding for 1999 than expected, concluded that it could no longer tackle a national crime problem on a local budget. The force asked the NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) to take over the financing and running of the Desk, but the NCIS, faced with dwindling resources itself, said that the Desk wasn’t part of its remit. Essex Police was left with no option: it announced that the Desk would close.

In a last-ditch effort to rescue the Stolen Lorry Load Desk, Essex Police turned to The National Plant and Equipment Register (TER). The Register – which has helped police recover £4 million worth of equipment stolen from construction sites since 1995 – agreed to help.

In a ground-breaking police and industry partnership, TER has convinced companies from within the insurance and freight industries to each pay between £1,000 and £10,000 to subscribe to the Desk for one year. The money will keep afloat the Desk, which costs £40,000 a year to run. If the Desk can provide investors with detailed information on lorry load crime trends, as well as cut losses for insurers and hauliers by cracking crime and recovering loads, the investors may subscribe to the Desk on a more permanent basis.

Tim Purbrick, insurance manager for TER, explains: “If we can show that the Desk is cutting losses for insurers and road hauliers through recoveries, I’m fairly certain that all parties will continue to invest in the Desk after the trial has ended.” TER will also help Essex Police recover stolen construction plant equipment – between January and September of last year, more than £1 million worth of plant equipment was stolen from lorries, claims Essex Police.

Julian Radcliffe, founder and chairman of TER and the Art Loss Register, explains why the Desk – backed by Royal and Sun Alliance insurance and Securicor Omega Container Logistics – has to be put on a commercial footing: “It would be impossible to get insurers and the haulage industry to support a police initiative such as this without them getting something in return,” says Radcliffe. “To make the Desk sustainable, they have to gain a financial net benefit. If they’d made a one-off payment just as a goodwill, good-for-publicity gesture, it would have just been a case of delaying the evil day when the Desk would die.”

Radcliffe claims that insurers and road hauliers were eager to fund the venture. This is because subscribers to the Desk feel they’re in a no-lose situation, reckons Peter McDermott, manager of UK Marine Practice for Royal and Sun Alliance.

The company, which claims to be the UK’s leading insurer of cargo, hosted the high-profile re-launch of the Desk at its Chelmsford offices in Essex, and McDermott admits: “It’s not exactly costing us an arm and a leg. We hope the Desk will provide us with a profit, and that it will deter theft of our clients’ goods. But whatever happens, the publicity generated won’t have done us any harm.”

A £260 million-a-year problem

Many people in the road haulage industry believe that the Essex Police initiative represents their best chance of beating HGV (heavy goods vehicle) theft and loss of loads.

Between January and September last year, according to the Desk, 529 HGVs were stolen and 25 lorries were hijacked. In addition, 575 HGVs were relieved of their loads, and £55 million worth of goods were reported stolen. You name it, thieves stole it: wines and spirits, tobacco, computers, furniture, nappies, clothing, food and even tractors “fell off” the back of a lorry last year.

Pc Iain McKinnon of Essex Police, who heads the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk, says that the majority of lorry load crimes are carried out by armed, organised gangs: “The gangs use lorry-jacking and lorry theft to assist other criminal activities, such as drugs and alcohol smuggling, bootlegging and transportation of illegal immigrants,” claims McKinnon. “We are also aware of Dutch gangs committing lorry thefts in Britain, while there are now British gangs operating abroad, because European borders have come down.”

It’s not just organised gangs committing the crimes, adds McKinnon: “There’s also the opportunist thieves – they’ll see a lorry in a lay-by and target it.”

Sharing the load

A lorry load could be stolen in the north of England and then be sold in London next day

Despite the size of the task ahead, McKinnon is bullish about the Desk’s prospects of getting to grips with lorry load theft. Out of the 529 HGVs reported stolen by the Desk last year, he points out that 135 were recovered.

Pc McKinnon is confident that increased co-operation between Essex Police, insurers, road hauliers and other police forces will help the Desk further erode lorry load crime. Around three-quarters of UK police forces already use the Desk, and Essex Police will now share non-sensitive information on lorry load theft with freight insurers and the haulage industry.

Essex Police is more than happy to oblige, claims McKinnon: “We want to overhaul the database to carry more details, such as names of lorry drivers and the number of times their load has been targeted,” so police can identify cases where the driver might have colluded with criminals, something McKinnon admits occurs fairly frequently. “We also want to gather more information on areas hit more often than others, such a certain stretch of motorway, so we can react accordingly.”

He claims that information-sharing has already reaped rewards since the Desk’s one-year trial began at the end of last year: “A load of computers were stolen on the south coast of England and were recovered in 24 hours, due to liaison between the two police forces and TER,” he reveals. “Without the Desk, this success wouldn’t have been possible.”

The Desk needs to establish strong links on the continent, too. A significant number of stolen lorry loads are ferried abroad, which has prompted the Desk to develop links with Interpol, as well as police forces on the Continent, including Garda in Ireland and Rotterdam Police in Holland.

It’s also vital that lorry drivers who are victims of a theft or lorry-jacking pass on any information about the crime to the Desk. McKinnon is confident that Essex Police’s publicity campaign, which involves among other things promoting the Desk’s telephone hotline on posters, will get the C32Á message across, but it won’t be easy. According to the Road Haulage Association (RHA), drivers are often loathe to speak out about criminals for fear of reprisals.

This is hardly surprising, considering the violent nature of lorry-jackings. In one recent incident, an Essex driver was abducted by four hijackers at a transport depot in Tilbury. The driver was blindfolded and tied up before being bundled into the boot of a car and driven around for over an hour before being released, shocked but unhurt.

Nevertheless, David Orrell, eastern manager for the RHA, says that the Desk has been successful so far in encouraging lorry drivers to report incidents. He reflects: “What has happened since the Desk was launched is that lorry crime figures have gone through the roof, but this is because it’s now easier for drivers to report crime, via the Desk.”

Industry support

The Desk’s desire to paint a national picture of Britain’s haulage theft problem has been welcomed by Tony Allen, security manager for Securicor Omega Container Logistics; the company’s 1400 vehicles handle £100 million worth of goods every day for blue-chip customers. Allen, who has reduced lorry load theft from Securicor Omega vehicles by 67% in two years, wears many hats within the haulage industry — he is also chairman of the steering committee for the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk and vice-chairman of Truck Watch, and he was recently named Security Manager of the Year in the Security Excellence Awards.

He says of the Desk: “The haulage industry is now getting access to data on crime trends it was previously impossible for us to get our hands on. It will enable us to get a better picture of crime so we can react to the problem more effectively.”

Police forces, too, will benefit from swapping leads on lorry load crime, predicts Allen: “Before the Desk was set up, each police force put out separate information on lorry load crime, which was of little benefit to hauliers,” he laments. “A lorry load could be stolen in the north of England and then be sold on the market in Canning Town [in London] the next day. We need to have cross-border co-operation between UK police forces to tackle this type of crime.”

The most high-profile supporter of the revived, revamped National Stolen Lorry Load Desk is, undoubtedly, the Home Office. Charles Clarke MP, the Home Office Minister, was present at the re-launch of the Desk. In his speech to mark the occasion, Clarke praised the initiative: “Intelligence-led policing is crucial to our fight against crime, and this database will enable the police and the industry to hit back at the thieves,” he enthused. “Essex Police and TER are to be congratulated on this innovative partnership which will benefit policing, the haulage industry and the insurance market.”