Constabularies appear to have difficulty with this and I suspect, to an extent, they have difficulty with fraud generally, let alone the fraud that has occurred involving circumstance distortion and falsification.
There are occasions when a victim / insured suffers a theft; when we all accept the vehicle was stolen. But there are times when there are good grounds to suspect the account provided is unreliable. For example, the insured tells us the vehicle was taken without keys but is unable to provide any keys, or supplies one that appears to be (possibly proved to be) a spare or not even for the vehicle.
A victim-conscious (at least at the point of reporting the crime) constabulary is unlikely to consider the keys and how far will an officer press the victim for information; it is far easier to accept what is conveyed without question – that may cause distress or a complaint – likely a performance indicator for the constabulary.
The police role appears to be:
- Provide a crime number to the victim
- Get the VRM on PNC as LoS
This is the crime report just about wrapped up. Now, it is for insurers and their representatives to address the complicities of the contract. Before an insurer becomes the victim of the crime by paying for something that they currently do not (and may never) possess, there are questions to be answered.
No one is suggesting that the police do an insurers job for them. In the first instance, it would be helpful if the police understood this is a joint approach to helping a victim. Furthermore, that the prevention and detection of crime extends to not enabling an insurer to become a victim. Therefore it is a legitimate query, touching upon that suspicion of fraud, whether the police report states a key was in the car at the time of the loss (as an example).
The police should have no difficulty in reconciling their roles; supportive of victims following an allegation and preventing / detecting crime by the victim associated with the original loss; by contrast the fraud that is ‘Fraud by false representation’, s2 Fraud Act 2006. The victim might become the accused, but it is only the dishonest victim that need worry.
I suspect the need to make ‘fraud’ applications, Appendix E of the MoU, could be averted if Appendix D were more accessible. Appendix D could be utilised initially, and support a subsequent ‘E’ approach if necessary.
If you were to ask constabularies how many MoU D and E approaches they receive and in respect of how many ‘E’ requests they release information, I anticipate there will be some who always withhold information – I made such an FoIA request about this some years ago of a constabulary – they had never disclosed following an ‘E’.
2025 Updates:
2022 MoU