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Cambridgeshire Research Group

2018/19

BRIEFING PAPER

BICYCLE THEFTS IN CAMBRIDGE CITY

FINAL VERSION

AUTHORS: Leigh Roberts & David Attmore

Cambridgeshire Research Group

CONTACT: 01223 715300

research.group@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

DATE: May 2018

PRODUCED FOR: Cambridge City Council

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PURPOSE

Cambridge City Council commissioned a profile on recent bicycle theft, with a particular

focus on location and time of offence.

METHODOLOGY

Data was extracted from CrimeFile (as recorded by Cambridgeshire Constabulary) for the

period March 2017 to February 2018 that had occurred within the boundary of Cambridge

City. There have been a total of 2,555 thefts of bicycles over this period. The data was

geocoded using MapInfo, as per the usual protocols for the Research Group, and analysed

looking for any geographic or temporal trends.

NATIONAL OVERVIEW

The number of police recorded bicycle thefts in England & Wales remained relatively flat

during the early 1980s, before rising steadily during the late 80s and early 90s, with a peak

of 222,000 incidents in the year to December 1992. Thefts then steadily began to decrease

before staying relatively flat between year ending 2003 and 2012. There was a general

downward trend between the years ending March 2012 and March 2016, which has also

been seen in the crime survey for England & Wales (CSEW). In the past 12 months, to the

year ending March 2017, there was a 9% increase in bicycle theft recorded by the police. It

is deemed too early to conclude whether this will see a shift in the long-term trend of

bicycle theft. The latest figures remain 58% below the peak number of bicycle thefts seen in

19921.

Data from the 2011 national census shows that over 30% of journeys to work by Cambridge

residents are by pedal cycle. For Cambridgeshire as a whole the figure is 9.7%, which is

much higher than the average 3% for England. The Department for Transport’s walking and

cycling publication for 2015-162 shows that 56.9% of adults in Cambridge cycle at least once

a week. 40.2% of residents cycle at least 3 times a week and 31.6% at least 5 times a week.

These figures are significantly higher than the UK average, with just 12% of adults cycling at

least once per week. Cambridge was the local authority with the highest prevalence for

cycling, followed by Oxford at 39%.

Research looking at bicycle thefts in England has found that following an initial bicycle theft,

the risk of further bicycle thefts occurring nearby increases for a period of around four

1https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/overviewofbicycletheft/2017-07-20 2 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/walking-and-cycling-statistics-england-2016

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weeks. This concept is known as the ‘near-repeat phenomenon’ and has been found to exist

for a number of different crime types across many countries3.

COMPARISON WITH OTHER COMMUNITY SAFETY PARTNERSHIPS

There were a total of 3,792 bicycle thefts in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough in the year

ending March 20174, of which Cambridge city thefts accounted for 61.8% (2,344 thefts).

Peterborough was the next highest at 20% (760 thefts), with just 1% of thefts occurring in

East Cambridgeshire (38 thefts). In order to allow comparisons between areas, in terms of

thefts of bicycles, we look at crimes as a rate per 1000 population. Using data from the ONS5

which has the rate of bicycle theft for each community safety partnership (CSP) in England &

Wales, we see that the rate of bicycle theft in Cambridge city is 18 per 1,000 population.

This is the highest rate in the whole of England & Wales, and is significantly higher than the

second highest rate of 12 per 1,000 population in Oxford.

The top 10 CSPs in terms of bicycle theft per 1,000 population is shown in the table below,

which shows that the rate of crime in Cambridge is significantly higher compared to the rest

of England & Wales (excluding the City of London).

Table 1: CSPs with highest rate of bicycle theft (per 1,000 population)

Rank CSP Rate of bicycle theft per 1,000 population

1 Cambridge 18

2 Oxford 12

3= Reading 6

3= Hammersmith and Fulham 6

3= Hackney 6

6= Norwich 5

6= Portsmouth 5

6= Westminster 5

6= Tower Hamlets 5

6= Lincoln 5

6= Camden 5

TREND

By using data from CADET6, we can look at the trend of bicycle thefts in Cambridge over

time. The number of bicycle thefts in the city had remained relatively stable over recent

years, before the number of thefts increasing by 20% in the last 12 months. This is the

3 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/jdibrief/crime/bicycle-theft 4 Latest data available from ONS 5https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/recordedcrimedatabycommunitysafetypartnershiparea 6 CADET is Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s performance data, it is audited data that is used for submission to the Home Office. However as aggregated data it does not provide the granulation required for the geographic and temporal analysis only the overall trends.

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largest increase in thefts over recent years, with two of the previous 5 years seeing

decreases in the number of thefts.

Table 2: Number of bicycle thefts and change from 12 month periods

Period Number of thefts Percentage change from previous 12 months

March 2012 – February 2013 2,107

March 2013 – February 2014 1,946 -7.6%

March 2014 – February 2015 2,273 +16.8%

March 2015 – February 2016 2,167 -4.7%

March 2016 – February 2017 2,260 +4.3%

March 2017 – February 2018 2,715 +20.1%

These trends differ slightly to the national figures (see National Overview), which may be

due to a number of factors, such as; the number of bicycles that are in Cambridge, whether

people are choosing to report theft to the police, and whether or not bikes are being locked

up.

LOCATION OF OFFENCE

Ward Level

Police crime data for bicycle theft can be analysed at various levels of geography, including

Ward level, where we see that 42% of the thefts over the past 12 months occurred in

Market ward, with a further 13% occurring in Petersfield ward. Whereas, only 1% occurred

in Cherry Hinton ward and 2.5% in both Arbury ward and East Chesterton ward. Given the

level of traffic into the city centre – where the night-time economy, retail and employment

centres are (which are located in the Market Ward) it is unsurprising that the largest

proportion of bicycle thefts took place there.

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Figure 1: Number of bicycle thefts by ward level

LSOA Level

By looking at a lower level of geography, we can see which Lower Super Output Areas

(LSOAs) had the highest number of bicycle thefts over the last 12 months.

Table 3: Number of bicycle thefts by LSOA (Top 10)

LSOA Ward Number of thefts E01032797 Market 941

E01017987 Petersfield 148

E01017983 Market 131

E01032795 Trumpington 111

E01017988 Petersfield 91

E01017958 Castle 71

E01018005 Trumpington 63

E01017986 Newnham 57

E01018009 West Chesterton 50

E01018003 Trumpington 48

The top 10 LSOAs (above) with the highest number of bicycle thefts totalled 1,711 thefts,

over 65% of the total number of thefts seen in the City.

Hotspot maps

Figure 2 shows the areas of the city that were a ‘hotspot’ for bicycle thefts over the past 12

months. This supports the evidence above that Market ward has large areas where there

have been a high number of recorded bicycle thefts, with Petersfield ward (in particular by

Number of bicycle thefts, by Ward

Market

Petersfield

Trumpington

West Chesterton

Castle

Newnham

Romsey

Coleridge

Queen Edith's

Abbey

King's Hedges

Arbury

East Chesterton

Cherry Hinton

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Cambridge rail station) also seeing areas of high recorded bicycle theft. The area with the

highest concentration of thefts of bicycles over the past 12 months has been around the

market square and behind Lion Yard, as well as along Sidney Street and around the Grand

Arcade. The three other hotspots of bicycle theft in the city were the Grafton Centre,

Parker’s Piece/Gonville Place and Rail Station/Station Road.

Figure 2: Hotspot map of bicycle thefts

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By looking at the throughfare name recorded for each crime, we can see that in Market

Ward, the streets with the highest number of recorded bicycle thefts were:

St. Andrews Street – 77

Park Street – 57

Regent Street – 53

Fitzroy Street - 41

Trumpington Street – 41

A significant number of the other streets recorded as having at least 20 thefts recorded

were in or around the City Centre.

Figure 3: Map showing crime hotspots in extended city centre area

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Some of the hotspot areas, for example by Kelsey Kerridge/Parkside pools, appear on our

map due to a large number of thefts occurring from specific locations. There are three main

locations around Kelsey Kerridge sports centre which have seen over 50 bicycle thefts

during the past 12 months. The locations include Queen Anne Car park, Kelsey Kerridge

Sports Centre and the railings outside Parkside Pools.

Rail station

Figure 3 gives a better indication of the situation of bicycle theft around Cambridge rail

station. It shows that there are four main geographic areas where theft has been the most

prevalent over the past 12 months. However, by looking closer at the data it appears that

the majority of the thefts that have created the two hotspots along Station Road actually

occurred in the cycle park at the rail station. It should be noted that there were also a

number of thefts occurring by the workplaces and retail units shown in the hotspots, but

they do not appear to be as significant as the number of thefts that have occurred from the

station cycle park. It therefore appears that the new cycle park built at the rail station is not

a deterrent for thieves, with a large quantity of bicycles being stolen from there over the

past 12 months.

Peas Hill

Focussing on Peas Hill, there were a total of 33 recorded thefts in the past 12 months, with

over one-quarter of thefts recorded in May (9 out of the 33). Table 3 shows the number of

bicycle thefts over the past 12 months in the streets/passageways in and around Peas Hill.

Table 4: Bicycle Thefts by street, around Guildhall/Peas Hill

Throughfare Name Number of thefts

Peas Hill 33

Guildhall Street 29

St Edwards Passage 16

Bene’t Street 10

Wheeler Street 6

A total of 94 bicycle thefts occurred in and around Peas Hill/the Guildhall during the past 12

months. May & June saw the highest number of thefts, with 18 occurring in each month. 21

of the 36 bicycles (58%) to be stolen during that two month period were left on Peas Hill or

St Edwards Passage. The majority of the thefts that occurred state that the bicycle was left

secured to a cycle rack/railing when it was stolen. This suggests that thieves are targeting

these areas by taking equipment to cut through locks of the bicycles that are secured there.

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TIME OF OFFENCE

Offences are recorded with a ‘time offence occurred from’ and a ‘time offence occurred to’

field, which is to account for when the victim is unsure of when an offence took place. For

example a bicycle or car locked and left overnight and the victim finds it missing in the

morning.

The data was analysed in two ways; firstly, by looking at the volume of offences recorded in

the first hour of the occurrence, and secondly by looking at the mid-point of when the

offence took place.

Time frame less than 1 hour

314 out of the 2,555 thefts (12.3%) occurred in a time frame of the less than one hour, i.e.

there was less than an hour between the bicycle being left and realising it was stolen. Of

these thefts we know the exact hour of the day that the bicycle was stolen, allowing us to

analyse the most common time of day for theft. Over one-fifth (22.6%) of these bicycle

thefts occurred in a two hour period between 16:00 and 18:00 hours. Also, just over half

(50.6%) of these bicycle thefts occurred between 14:00 and 20:00.

Figure 4: Hour of day theft occurred, for theft time frames less than 1 hour

Midpoint

The method used to evaluate the time of theft of all the recorded bicycle thefts in

Cambridge City was to work out the midpoint between the ‘time occurred from’ and the

‘time occurred to’. This assumes that bike thefts, on average, occurred around the midpoint

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Hour of Day

Hour theft occurred, when time frame less than 1 hour

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between the bike being left and the owner realising the bike had been stolen. 29.6% of the

thefts recorded had a window of time in which the theft could have occurred of more than

12 hours.

This method shows a similar picture in that over one-third (34.1%) of thefts occurred

between the hours of 12:00 and 17:00, with an additional 5.6% occurring before 18:00. Of

these 1014 thefts occurring between these hours, 300 had a time frame of the theft of less

than two hours (29.5%). Whereas, 261 of these thefts had a potential time frame of the

theft of more than 10 hours (25.7%).

Figure 5: Hour theft occurred, using midpoint between occurred from and to

The trend of the hour the theft occurred appears very similar to using the methodology of

only focussing on those crimes that had a time frame of theft of less than one hour. The

main difference being that the peak time of theft, when using the midpoint, is just after

midday, whereas before it was later in the afternoon. That may be due to the time that

people are leaving their bicycle parked up for a time frame of less than one hour.

Figure 6 compares data for the hour the theft occurred from (provided when reporting to

the police) and the midpoint the crime could have occurred (halfway between occurred

from and occurred to time). There are some hours of the day where there is a large disparity

between these two measures. Primarily during the hours of 00:00 and 05:00 not many

bicycles are being left in the city, however by using the midpoint we see that a larger

number of bicycles are being stolen, which is possible if thieves are targeting bicycles that

have been left at night. Whereas, there are a larger number of bicycles being left between

07:00 and 10:00, as people leave them after their morning commute, compared to the

number of bicycles being stolen at these times.

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Hour of Day

Hour theft occurred, using midpoint of time frame

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Figure 6: Hour crime occurred from and Midpoint hour of crime

Market ward

By looking at the crimes that occurred in Market Ward, a larger proportion of the crimes

occurred between the hours of 12:00 and 17:00 than the city overall, at 37%. Also, an

additional 6.6% of thefts occurred before 18:00. Over half (51.4%) of all thefts in the ward

occurred in a time frame of less than 3 hours. This is potentially due to the number of

people cycling into the city centre in order to go shopping for the afternoon, making bicycles

a greater target for thieves.

By looking at the month in which the theft occurred from in Market ward, we see that the

most common months of theft were May (13.9%) and June (15.7%). That was then followed

by October (9.4%) and November (9.3%). This may be due to the timings of University

students leaving bicycles in the ward – May/June being around exam time, and

October/November being as new students move to the city. This is similar to the trend of

monthly thefts in the city overall.

Peas Hill

83 of the 94 bicycles stolen from around Peas Hill were left for 12 hours or less before the

owner noticed they had been taken. 73.5% of these were likely to have been stolen during

the afternoon or evening. Along with the fact that these bicycles tended to be left locked to

a secure object points to the fact that thieves are targeting bicycles being left in this area of

the city whilst the owner visits the surrounding area.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Bike thefts by hour occurred from and midpoint occurred hour

Midpoint Hour Occurred From Hour

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City centre

Overall, within the city centre area, there appears to be a large number of thefts of bicycles

that are occurring in daylight. A number of these include the lock that secured the bicycle

being cut/broken, suggesting that thieves are planning their thefts and using equipment in

order to get access to the bicycle. This is true when looking at the thefts that occurred by

Kelsey Kerridge sports centre on Gonville Place. Using both methods of time analysis we get

the same result where the thefts have occurred during daylight hours, generally between

9am and 7pm. Most of these bicycles were also left for a short period of time, whilst the

owner was using the nearby facilities. However, there is a slightly different picture when

looking at the thefts from Cambridge rail station Cycle Park, with a larger proportion of the

bicycles being left for longer periods of time allowing for the possibility of the theft to have

occurred at night.

APPENDIX

Data Notes

It should be noted that not all thefts are reported to the constabulary

It has previously been reported that bicycles locked and left on private property can

be removed rather than stolen

Bikes that were both locked up and not secured are included in the data

Although the rate per 1,000 population is used as a comparison we note that for bike

theft in Cambridge City this is less helpful, due to cyclists in Cambridge being

residents from elsewhere and the high volume of cyclists in the City.