Our investigation into drive-offs saw Freedom of Information requests sent to the UK’s 45 territorial police forces, and while our main article on this topic gained widespread media attention, the data shared with us was so rich that we’ve been able to pinpoint constabularies with the highest rates of drive-offs.
While listing the forces that received the highest number of drive-off reports from 2020-2024 would make for a neat headline, this wouldn’t hold much statistical water: the table would simply be topped by constabularies serving big populations. For example, the 15,787 drive-offs reported from 2020-24 to London’s Metropolitan constabulary, which polices around 8.9m people, makes it the top force in terms of outright reports.
Topping the tables, however, is Hertfordshire Police, which received the highest number of reports of fuel theft based on the population served by this constabulary
Our analysis involved consulting Home Office figures that detail the number of officers each force employs, and the number of officers per 100,000 people in each constabulary. By comparing these figures, we were able to calculate the number of drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year. Using this principle, the Metropolitan Police received 35 drive-offs per year, per 100,000 people, placing it 15th in our rankings.
There’s a fairly significant spread of data in our analysis: Hertfordshire, the force with the highest proportion of drive-offs, recorded 88% more incidents per 100,000 people than the force placing 10th.
Our rundown is based on the 21 police forces that were able to filter drive-off data; forces that were unable to separate drive-offs from overall Making Off Without Payment offences were not included.
Position 1: Hertfordshire constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 1,486
Est. population served: 1,213,776
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 111
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 92%
Hertfordshire Police has the dubious honour of topping our table of the highest proportion of drive-offs per capita. With 6,749 incidents across five years, the force receives an average of 1,486 reports for this crime each year, equivalent to 28 incidents a week, or four per day.
Serving around 1.2 million people, that equates to 111 drive-offs being reported to Herts Police each year per 100,000 members of the population.
More bad news for the force: with 6,209 investigations being closed with no suspect being identified from 2020-24, Hertfordshire also has one of the worse clear-up rates for fuel theft, with 91.99% of these crimes seeing no action taken against offenders.
Position 2: Northumbria constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 1,486
Est. population served: 1,478,764
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 100
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 91.1%
Northumbria places second, with 100 drive-offs annually for every 100,000 members of the population it serves, or one per 1,000 people. The force’s protocol for recording drive-offs was the best developed of any force that provided us with data, but it seems this information is often diligently collected for no effect, as 91.1% of fuel thefts saw Northumbrian officers end investigations with no suspect being identified, an above-average proportion.
Position 3: Leicestershire constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 910
Est. population served: 1,152,308
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 79
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 92.9%
With one of the higher rates of investigations into drive-offs being ended with no suspect being identified, Leicestershire also posts a high proportion of drive-offs, with 79 such crimes reported per 100,000 people annually.
Position 4: Nottinghamshire constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 899
Est. population served: 1,171,220
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 77
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 86.5%
Nottinghamshire’s clear-up rate of 86.5% is around the national average, but with 4,495 drive-offs recorded from 2020-24, and an average of 899 annually, that means there are around 77 drive-offs reported each year per 100,000 members of the population.
Position 5: Cleveland constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 435
Est. population served: 587,549
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 74
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: N/A
Cleveland Police couldn’t collate its clear-up rate for drive-off offences within the 18-hour time limit provided by the Freedom of Information Act, but the force was able to share that it logged 2,177 incidents from 2020-24, or 435 a year. Serving a population of just 587,549, that works out at 74 drive-offs reported per 100,000 people annually, placing Cleveland slap-bang in the middle of our rankings.
Position 6: West Yorkshire constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 1,756
Est. population served: 2,406,667
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 73
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 86.2%
If we were basing our rundown solely on the number of drive-off incidents reported to police, West Yorkshire would place second, behind only London’s Metropolitan force. But with West Yorkshire’s 6,137 officers responsible for policing 2.4m people, the force comes sixth in our countdown, with an average of 73 drive-offs per 100,000.
One anomaly to emerge over the course of our enquiries came in November 2022, when West Yorkshire Police recorded that fuel worth £53,669 was stolen in a single incident. We queried this with the constabulary, and were told it wasn’t a data-entry error: instead, this related to an incident where one individual was found to have stolen 25,000 litres of diesel.
Position: 7 Staffordshire constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 810
Est. population served: 1,163,372
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 70
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: N/A
As with Cleveland, Staffordshire Police wasn’t able to tell us how many drive-off investigations were closed with no suspect being identified, but the force was able to inform us of 4,049 incidents over the five years we enquired about. This equates to an average of 810 drive-offs a year, or 70 crimes per 100,000 people annually.
Position 8: Cambridgeshire constabulary
Est. population served: 917,553
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 64
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 87.2%
Cambridgeshire’s 1,725 officers police a little under a million people, while the force had 2,946 drive-offs reported to it over 2020-24. That works out at an average of 589 drive-offs a year, equivalent to 64 incidents per 100,000 people. Cambridgeshire’s clear-up rate is pretty much bang-on average at a national level.
Position 9: Humberside constabulary
Average drive offs per year: 602
Est. population served: 950,628
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 63
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 82.8%
Humberside Police recorded 3,008 drive-offs from 2020-24, equivalent to an average of 602 incidents a year. With a population just shy of a million, that works out at 63 drive-offs reported to police per 100,000 people. Humberside Police had a slightly better ‘clear-up rate’ than average, though, with 83% of drive-offs seeing investigations closed with no suspect identified.
Position 10: North Wales constabulary
Average drive-offs per year: 386
Est. population served: 659,387
Drive-offs per 100,000 people, per year: 59
Proportion of drive-offs with no suspect identified: 69.7%
North Wales Police, a constabulary serving an estimated 659,387 citizens, recorded an average of 59 drive-offs per year per 100,000 people. Interestingly, North Wales had the best clear-up rate for drive-offs, only closing 69.7% of cases without identifying a suspect, against a national average of around 86%.
