How Britain's forecourts became crime hotspots

Telegraph

5 hours ago

At two o'clock on a warm and breezy afternoon in east London, a blueish-grey hatchback sweeps into a petrol station on Vallance Road, which links the bustling streets of Whitechapel with Bethnal Green.
The garage, located between a 24-hour gym, a Halal grill house and a Jewish bakery, is quiet, save for the cheery sounds of children playing in the grounds of a nearby primary school.
The hatchback parks beside Pump Three, one of eight pumps on the forecourt, and the driver, a tall, thin bespectacled man in trainers, grey trousers and a maroon coloured jacket, gets out and fills up.
Three minutes later, he returns to the car and speeds off – without paying.
It's a brazen example of fuel theft, also known as 'bilking', or 'pump and dash', a crime that has grown rapidly since the pandemic and the sudden surge in oil prices in 2022 sparked by the war in Ukraine. Industry experts warn that it's 'spiralling out of control', threatening family businesses that are responsible for running thousands of Britain's petrol stations. It is increasingly being linked to organised crime networks who use stolen, fake or cloned number plates to evade detection. Some criminals even fill up containers of fuel hidden in their vehicles to sell on the 'black market'.
'It's a really serious issue and we've definitely seen it get worse,' says Gordon Balmer, executive director of the Petrol Retailers Association. The body represents companies which own over 4,000 forecourts in the UK – about half of the total.
'People think they can get away with it'
'People think they can get away with it, so unfortunately it's gone through the roof,' says Balmer, adding that posts on social media have encouraged others to have a go. 'We've even had people film themselves filling up with fuel, and not paying, and then it appears on TikTok,' he says, citing a recent case in North Yorkshire.
Statistics from police forces, obtained by Forecourt Trader, an industry publication, suggest there've been more than 131,000 reported drive-off incidents in the UK over the past five years, with fuel losses estimated at £6.55 million.
But the figures hugely understate the scale of the problem because they exclude the thousands of cases that aren't notified to police. The industry accepts that with tight budgets and other more serious offences to deal with, detectives are unlikely to devote resources to an investigation into fuel theft – so most crimes go unreported.
'It can tie a policeman up for half a day reviewing CCTV, coming onto a forecourt. It's a lot of time and effort for a low value crime,' says Balmer.
Adding in cases that aren't recorded by police, the British Oil Security Syndicate (Boss), a not-for-profit organisation which campaigns for petrol station safety, estimates that there were a staggering 1.5 million incidents last year, a rise of 50 per cent in two decades. On average, it cost forecourt operators £9,800 per site, with garages in London, Surrey, Essex, the West Midlands and Oxford the worst hit.
A shift towards 'no means of payment' cases
About one-third of cases involve motorists leaving a petrol station shop or forecourt without any attempt to pay for their fuel. But Bruce Nichol, operations director at Boss, says the 'most dramatic shift' is a move towards 'no means of payment', which now account for two-thirds of cases. It's where drivers tell garage staff they haven't got enough money or claim to have forgotten to bring their cash or card. In such instances, staff will ask for the driver's details and make arrangements for them to pay later, taking action in the civil courts if they don't cough up.
Nichol says it's an unwelcome 'trend' with motorists exploiting the goodwill of petrol stations, to allow payments to be deferred until there's enough money in the bank. 'It's become a seven-day payday loan – we're finding it more and more to the point where we'll have to address that model,' he says.
The increase in 'no means of payment' cases suggests that genuine cost-of-living pressures may be one of the factors behind the overall rise in incidents – but the problem has been exacerbated by opportunist thieves and organised criminal gangs. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) says that is supported by research on the links between retail theft more broadly and organised crime.
'There are people who turn up in a transit van, they have a filling point that's connected to a tank and they fill up with 1000 litres, making off without payment,' says Balmer. 'We have criminal families who move from one jurisdiction to another getting fuel and flouting the law.'
Industry sources say criminal gangs within travelling communities pose a particular challenge for petrol retailers, sometimes using false filling caps to steal fuel, which funds other criminal activity, and moving across police force boundaries, which makes them hard to trace. Andy Dunbobbin, the joint lead on retail and business crime for the APCC, told The Telegraph there was 'a view' that gangs within travelling communities 'contributed significantly' to the problem.
Declining confidence in the justice system
Dunbobbin, the Labour North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, describes fuel theft in general as a 'big, big problem.'
He says: 'The financial impact on retailers and the lack of effective enforcement affects not only their profitability but undermines confidence in the justice system as well,' pointing to 'low' prosecution rates.
Data obtained by Forecourt Trader revealed that at least 131,000 drive-offs had been reported to police across the UK since 2020 – with 95 per cent of cases dropped because a suspect could not be identified. About 13 per cent of vehicles involved used false number plates. While shocking, the figures, from a Freedom of Information request, actually under-state the scale of fuel theft in the country as 12 police forces didn't respond.
Last month, however, in one of the few successful cases of clamping down on the wave of criminality, James Dunn was jailed for 16 months, after committing nine thefts from petrol stations across Kent. Dunn, who admitted various other offences, was said by police to have poured petrol into containers stored in the boot of his car, as well as refuelling the vehicle without paying. When officers caught up with him, he drove into a lamp-post.
At Vallance Road petrol station, whose site includes a cashpoint and well stocked mini-supermarket, the spike in fuel theft cases prompted an urgent re-think about security.
'There were some people that were coming almost every day,' says Nicolina, the site's section leader. 'They put in £70 and they would just drive off because they knew nothing's going to happen to them… I don't think it's fair to other customers who come here paying for their fuel.'
The owners installed high-tech surveillance cameras around the forecourt to monitor every vehicle entering and exiting. The images are displayed in 'gallery' form on a screen behind the tills in the store, along with each car's number plate, location on the forecourt and how long it's been on the site.
The registration numbers of vehicles that are linked to an incident of non-payment are logged in the system. If the car pulls up at a pump again, the cashier is immediately alerted and blocks them from accessing the petrol – unless the driver pays in advance.
The system works well with known repeat offenders. For those who have managed to evade detection because the registration number isn't stored on the database, like the hatchback's, there is a different process. The operators, Vars Technology, will try to trace the owners by obtaining information from the driver licensing agency, DVLA. A letter will be sent requesting payment for the fuel they've taken; if the deadline for payment isn't met, the owner faces escalating administration fees and potential legal action, through a debt recovery service.
'Spiralling out of control'
'Fuel theft is spiralling out of control because the police can't do anything, they don't have the resources and petrol stations have nobody to help them', says Vars director John Garnett. 'The beauty of our system is that we get the driver's details and we follow up.'
He says the measures have reduced 'drive-offs' by 80 per cent in the 1,500 petrol stations his company works with, but acknowledges that the system is not a panacea. 'People who steal regularly will not give up stealing fuel – they'll just move to another petrol station,' he says.
Or, they will use cloned or fake number plates. Experts say it's an increasing problem, not just for petrol stations, but more generally, as criminals try to circumvent Britain's well established network of ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras, which flag suspect vehicles to police.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, an independent transport research body, says petrol retailers may need to learn from car park operators who have developed innovative solutions to the problem of non-payment. 'The parking industry has some very fancy technology – in many places you can book your parking slot, you park and drive out, passing a barrier which rises automatically if it knows if you've paid.
'It is possible to envisage that kind of system for petrol stations – though it would be very hard to gate them. But if the problem keeps getting worse then it might be something the industry needs to think about,' says Gooding.
Others say that although oil companies and supermarkets might be able to afford installing and maintaining barriers in the forecourts they own, it would cost too much for the 4,000 petrol stations that are operated by small businesses, many of which are family-owned.
The industry is also likely to resist moves towards pre-payment pumps – where drivers pay on the forecourt before filling up – as a way to prevent fuel theft. Although common practice in the United States, and used at some British sites, there's a concern paying at the pump would deter drivers from using a visit to the petrol station to have a coffee, grab a sausage roll or do some shopping.
'I compare forecourts to sub-post offices – the proprietors really want you to come into the shop, to buy milk, flowers, chocolate,' says Gooding. 'It's in the grocery shop where they are making more money.'
There are, however, some signs of progress. The Policing and Crime Bill, which is going through Parliament, would scrap a rule that the Government says creates a perception of 'immunity' to criminals who steal goods worth less than £200 by treating them as summary cases, dealt with only by magistrates. In future, such cases could be heard in the Crown Court where the maximum sentence would be seven years, rather than two, as at present.
A coordinated approach is needed
And a Home Office drive to combat retail crime is focusing police minds, with the National Police Chiefs' Council having set up a dedicated intelligence unit to tackle theft linked to serious organised crime networks, Operation Opal. 'It's got to be a real, coordinated approach to tackling this,' says Dunbobbin.
Back at the Vallance Road petrol station, in a broom cupboard-sized office at the rear of the mini-supermarket, Nicolina is viewing CCTV footage of the hatchback that drove off without paying.
'Some of them actually forget,' says Nicolina, who's been employed at the garage for five years. 'When I first started working I was surprised how many times it happened that people forgot. Some people are in a hurry,' she says.
This driver certainly appears to be. After filling up with 33 litres of unleaded petrol, he replaces the nozzle, screws the fuel cap back on and briskly walks around the car to open the offside front door, before starting up the engine. Within 19 seconds of refuelling he's gone – driving off without even putting his seatbelt on.
Was he in such a rush that paying for the petrol slipped his mind? Or did he keep the trip to the garage as short as possible to avoid being caught?
'Who am I to judge?' says Nicolina. 'I don't want to say someone is a thief – maybe they're not.'
Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same. The petrol station has lost £42.94 and will now have to devote time and energy, through its security firm, to recover the money – without any guarantee that it ever will.