Section 16 extract from a 13/03/2019 submission to the West Midlands Police, their Police & Crime Commissioner and the Home Office, titled ‘U.K. VEHICLE THEFT Complacency‘. It appears all three authorities ‘filed the document on division’ – police parlance for ‘tossed it in the bin‘.
We live in a technological age with data/information moving around the globe in seconds.
Yet if I report a car stolen on Friday at 10am, it might find its way onto the PNC LoS register before 10:30am that day, but it will not be on the ‘Public-Facing’ registers until about 7am the following Monday morning.
That gives thieves almost 3 days to dispose of the vehicle, knowing that a pre-purchase ‘provenance enquiry’ by an innocent purchaser will report ‘not recorded stolen’
Such enquiries are those obtained from:
[since 2019] It must be over 5 years since I met with AVCIS (as it was then) and discussed this issue … nothing has changed.
It is time to embrace the data suppliers – I work with [redacted] and suspect they would welcome a development that sees near-instant transfer of data.
The innocent purchaser will likely not be compensated for their loss when that vehicle is taken from them, despite the warranty such checks might provide. This is generally because, at the time of the
check, the information provided was accurate, complete and true; the vehicle was ‘not
recorded stolen’, even though it might have been reported stolen to the Police over 48 hours
earlier.
The circulation of information is about the prevention of crime.
I suspect we, upon receipt of a notification that an enquirer has bought a stolen vehicle,
undertake more enquiries than most police constabularies. The obstruction encountered trying to
exchange information suggests embarrassment – that it is the accompanying lack of enquiry /
activity by the police that should not be disclosed or revealed.
2025 and the transfer of PNC LoS information to Vehicle Provenance companies continues to be once each weekday only.