A new investigation into fuel theft has uncovered that forecourt operators put in 49% more requests for motorists’ details to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in between February and April 2025 compared to the same period last year.
Some 66,378 requests were made to the DVLA this year over that period, compared to 44,631 in 2024.
These figures come from the RAC Foundation, which submitted a Freedom of Information request to the DVLA. The increase in requests will likely cover outright drive-offs; incidents where people enter a store but fail to pay for fuel when buying other items; or when drivers provide false or incorrect information when completing no means of payment information, having told staff that they forgot their wallet, bank card, purse, phone, cash, or any other method of paying for fuel.
This information follows hot on the heels of Forecourt Trader’s exhaustive investigation into drive-offs that found almost £7m of stolen fuel had been reported to police from 2024-25.
Commenting on his organisation’s findings, Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, says that while “it would be tempting to suspect that the cost-of-living crisis is pushing normally law-abiding people into committing this type of offence” he considered doing so, “would be an insult to the vast majority of people who continue to obey the law whatever their circumstances”.
He adds that “repeat criminals might well be pushing their luck more than ever” because they believe fuel theft won’t be investigated by police, something confirmed by Forecourt Trader’s research, which found officers end investigations with no suspect being identified in around 87% of cases.
Gooding describes fuel theft as “corrosive to society [and] damaging to businesses”, and says that the crime will ”ultimately push up pump prices for law-abiding motorists and riders”.
