What Car? research finds four in 10 vans don't come with an alarm as standard

Four in 10 of all new vans on sale do not come with an alarm as standard, according to an exclusive investigation by What Car? Vans. 

The findings follow research highlighting how more than 43,000 vans have been stolen since 2016, with a further 117,000 broken into, costing drivers and businesses more than £61.9 million in lost tools and other items.

Analysis of all new vans on sale today by What Car? Vans found that just 58% of models come with a factory fitted alarm as standard. Another 36.5% were found to offer a factory fitted alarm as an optional extra, while 5.5% of vans on sale today are not available with an alarm at all – though these tend to be older model iterations that are soon to be replaced.

Other security features, including remote central locking, were better represented with more than 90% of vehicles featuring the tech as standard, while deadlocks – a locking mechanism that doesn’t use a spring, making it harder to pick – are standard in more than 80% of vans on sale. 

The lack of alarm technology helps to account for the high number of van thefts in the UK. Between 2016 and 2019, 43,909 vans were stolen across the UK, according to exclusive figures sourced by What Car? from across the country’s 45 police forces. This equates to more than 30 vans a day.

The worst area for van thefts was London, with 14,263 vans stolen in the four year period, and 44,742 broken into by thieves. Across all police forces, van thefts rose by 8.21% between 2017 and 2018. Theft figures for the first half of 2019 suggest another year of rising statistics, with more than 8,200 vans stolen in the first six months of last year. 

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