Nine out of 10 London car thefts are unsolved

Almost 90% of vehicle thefts reported to the Metropolitan Police were unsolved, leading to calls for a national "crack team" to deal with the issue.

According to data from the House of Commons library commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, the London police force is the worst performing in the country on car crime.

The research showed that 88.5% of car thefts in the capital went unsolved.

The Met said car crime had a "significant impact on victims and communities", adding it had reduced car crime in the capital by almost 15% over the last eight months.

A spokesperson for the force said the number of recorded vehicle crimes across London including theft was cut by 14.7% from 71,929 between April and December 2024 to 61,362 in the same period this year.

The City of London Police had 81.5% of unsolved vehicle crimes, but it is responsible for a much smaller area, the Square Mile.

Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson MP said the previous Conservative government oversaw "years of self-defeating cuts to our police forces" while the current Labour government "must not turn a blind eye to this epidemic".

The party has called for the formation of a specialist team, based at the National Crime Agency, which could pool data from automatic number plate recognition cameras, insurance records and intelligence from police forces and border control to target organised car crime networks.

The data showed there were 121,825 thefts of motor vehicles recorded across police forces in England and Wales of which 92,958 were closed with no suspect identified.

In 35 of 44 forces in England and Wales, there was an unsolved rate of 60% or more, with an average of 76.3% of all investigations completed without an identified suspect.

A Home Office spokesman said "not enough has been done to prevent these crimes or to bring those responsible to justice".

He said the government was "introducing new laws to ban electronic devices used to steal vehicles, to training police officers on the methods used to steal vehicles and working with industry to address vulnerabilities in vehicles".

The spokesman added that vehicle crime fell by 12% in the year to June 2025, with a 7% reduction in vehicle theft.

The Conservatives have been approached for comment.

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