No suspect identified: what police data to August 2026 says about vehicle crime and driveway CCTV

A data study by Clear Security using police.uk open data to August 2026. Updated quarterly; this edition was published 31 October 2026.

Key findings

• Most vehicle crime offences end without a suspect. Of 276,366 vehicle crime offences recorded in the year to August 2025 across 37 police forces in England and Wales, 83.1% (229,717) had "Investigation complete; no suspect identified" as their latest outcome on police.uk.
• Only 3.0% reached a court-related outcome (8,325). A further 10.6% had a suspect but the case could not be taken forward.
• Burglary, for comparison: 72.6% of 194,269 burglaries ended with no suspect identified, and 7.2% reached a court-related outcome.
• Vehicle crime fell overall, but not everywhere. Recorded vehicle crime changed by -3.2% across 38 forces (285,220 to 276,112) between the year to August 2025 and the year to August 2026, and rose in 17 of them.
• London: vehicle crime changed by -4.6%, rising in 15 of 33 local authorities, led by Newham (+23.0%), Wandsworth (+7.3%), Greenwich (+6.8%).
• October (865 a day) and November (836 a day) were the busiest months for vehicle crime over three years, 15.3% above December, the quietest (750 a day).

1. Most vehicle crime offences end with no suspect identified

police.uk publishes the latest outcome for every recorded crime. We took all vehicle crime offences recorded between September 2024 and August 2025, so each case had at least a year to progress before the August 2026 data release. Across the 37 forces with usable outcome data:

Latest outcome (police.uk category)	Vehicle crime offences	Share
Investigation complete; no suspect identified	229,717	83.1%
Unable to prosecute suspect	29,327	10.6%
Court-related (awaiting court outcome, court result unavailable, or charged as part of another case)	8,325	3.0%
Status update unavailable	7,661	2.8%
Other (under investigation, caution, local resolution, etc.)	1,336	0.5%
Total	276,366

How often "no suspect" was the outcome varies by force:

Highest share	Lowest share
Metropolitan Police Service 89.7%	Dyfed-Powys Police 47.9%
South Yorkshire Police 88.1%	Cumbria Constabulary 53.9%
Leicestershire Police 87.4%	North Wales Police 54.0%

Differences partly reflect how each force records and reports outcomes, so this is not a league table of police performance.

Why this matters for CCTV. The data does not say whether a camera was present, so it cannot show that CCTV changes outcomes. What it does show is how often a vehicle crime case stops at identifying a suspect — the job footage is expected to help with. Footage only helps if it is usable: a face or a number plate that can be made out, a correct timestamp, and a recording that still exists when police ask for it.

2. Burglary

For the same period and forces there were 194,269 burglaries: 141,082 (72.6%) ended with no suspect identified, 30,190 (15.5%) were "Unable to prosecute suspect", and 14,034 (7.2%) reached a court-related outcome. Recorded burglary changed by -2.8% across 38 forces (201,098 to 195,423) and rose in 15 of them.

3. Where vehicle crime rose and fell, by force

Recorded vehicle crime, year to August 2025 compared with year to August 2026 (38 forces):

Force	Year to August 2025	Year to August 2026	Change
City of London Police	103	137	+33.0%
Gwent Police	2,456	3,175	+29.3%
Durham Constabulary	2,365	2,762	+16.8%
Cumbria Constabulary	737	858	+16.4%
Lincolnshire Police	2,022	2,354	+16.4%
Humberside Police	3,164	3,667	+15.9%
Nottinghamshire Police	5,062	5,854	+15.6%
Devon & Cornwall Police	3,147	3,548	+12.7%
Northamptonshire Police	3,429	3,830	+11.7%
Cleveland Police	3,350	3,683	+9.9%
Dyfed-Powys Police	764	826	+8.1%
Suffolk Constabulary	1,905	2,033	+6.7%
Cheshire Constabulary	2,089	2,192	+4.9%
South Wales Police	6,160	6,373	+3.5%
Avon and Somerset Constabulary	8,854	9,034	+2.0%
Wiltshire Police	1,839	1,850	+0.6%
West Yorkshire Police	15,797	15,819	+0.1%
Derbyshire Constabulary	3,731	3,718	-0.3%
West Midlands Police	27,448	27,377	-0.3%
Merseyside Police	5,094	5,050	-0.9%
Metropolitan Police Service	86,807	82,846	-4.6%
Thames Valley Police	11,481	10,956	-4.6%
Surrey Police	4,418	4,193	-5.1%
Cambridgeshire Constabulary	3,913	3,678	-6.0%
North Wales Police	1,215	1,140	-6.2%
Kent Police	7,958	7,400	-7.0%
Lancashire Constabulary	7,249	6,726	-7.2%
Essex Police	11,175	10,286	-8.0%
Hertfordshire Constabulary	6,400	5,863	-8.4%
Sussex Police	6,091	5,575	-8.5%
Norfolk Constabulary	1,644	1,495	-9.1%
Staffordshire Police	4,973	4,473	-10.1%
South Yorkshire Police	11,161	9,974	-10.6%
Bedfordshire Police	4,797	4,175	-13.0%
West Mercia Police	4,113	3,418	-16.9%
Warwickshire Police	3,740	3,085	-17.5%
Leicestershire Police	6,718	5,249	-21.9%
North Yorkshire Police	1,851	1,440	-22.2%
All 38 forces	285,220	276,112	-3.2%

These are counts, not rates per household, so larger forces naturally show larger numbers. Changes in recording practice can also move a force's figures.

Local figures by police force area

Each police force area has its own page with council-level tables, outcomes and seasonal patterns:

Police force area	Vehicle crime offences (year to August 2026)	Change
London	82,846	-4.6%
West Yorkshire	15,819	+0.1%
the West Midlands	27,377	-0.3%

4. London: vehicle crime rose in 15 of 33 local authorities

police.uk places each crime in a small area (LSOA). Grouping those areas by local authority gives this picture for London:

Local authority	Year to August 2025	Year to August 2026	Change	No suspect identified (year to August 2025)
City of London	132	171	+29.5%	72.7%
Newham	3,895	4,789	+23.0%	89.5%
Wandsworth	2,805	3,010	+7.3%	91.2%
Greenwich	2,473	2,640	+6.8%	88.7%
Kingston upon Thames	943	990	+5.0%	89.9%
Croydon	3,536	3,705	+4.8%	89.3%
Bromley	3,337	3,459	+3.7%	90.7%
Havering	2,188	2,238	+2.3%	89.3%
Hillingdon	3,397	3,470	+2.1%	87.0%
Barking and Dagenham	2,114	2,152	+1.8%	90.6%
Tower Hamlets	2,600	2,627	+1.0%	90.0%
Enfield	3,843	3,867	+0.6%	88.9%
Lambeth	2,668	2,680	+0.4%	91.0%
Merton	1,374	1,376	+0.1%	87.6%
Barnet	3,820	3,821	+0.0%	90.4%
Richmond upon Thames	1,637	1,633	-0.2%	91.2%
Ealing	4,278	4,265	-0.3%	90.3%
Sutton	1,310	1,278	-2.4%	88.2%
Harrow	1,882	1,828	-2.9%	88.2%
Southwark	2,564	2,426	-5.4%	90.4%
Brent	3,082	2,881	-6.5%	88.9%
Haringey	3,284	3,041	-7.4%	89.7%
Lewisham	2,850	2,630	-7.7%	88.4%
Redbridge	2,941	2,676	-9.0%	89.2%
Bexley	1,839	1,662	-9.6%	87.3%
Hammersmith and Fulham	1,872	1,645	-12.1%	88.9%
Hackney	2,150	1,878	-12.7%	90.5%
Hounslow	3,057	2,634	-13.8%	89.8%
Kensington and Chelsea	2,576	2,048	-20.5%	91.2%
Camden	2,707	2,135	-21.1%	91.6%
Waltham Forest	3,187	2,515	-21.1%	89.8%
Islington	2,384	1,822	-23.6%	91.4%
Westminster	3,992	2,724	-31.8%	91.0%
London total	86,717	82,716	-4.6%	89.7%

Across London, 89.7% of vehicle crime offences in the year to August 2025 ended with no suspect identified, against 83.1% across the 37 forces.

5. Vehicle crime by month of the year

Across 36 forces and three full years (September 2023 to August 2026; 867,384 vehicle crime offences), the average number of vehicle crime offences per day in each calendar month was:

Month	Per day	Month	Per day
October	865	December	750
November	836	August	765
September	834	July	769
February	791	March	769
January	788	June	770
April	788	May	773

October's daily average is 15.3% higher than December's. Burglary peaked in October (589 a day) and was lowest in May (513 a day).

The data cannot say why, and it has no time-of-day field. The peak does coincide with darker evenings — when a car on a drive or in a car park spends more of the night in the dark, and when cameras switch to infrared or low-light mode and image quality is most often at its weakest.

6. What this means if you have, or are planning, CCTV for your drive or parking space

This section is practical guidance, not a finding from the data.

• Identification is the gap. A camera that shows something happened to a car is less useful than one that shows who. Check your footage at night, not just in daylight: can you make out a face by the car door, or a number plate on the drive?
• Check the clock. Footage with the wrong date or time is harder to use. Check your recorder's time after every clock change (the last Sundays of March and October).
• Keep footage long enough to hand over. Damage to a car or a theft from it may only be noticed the next morning, or days later. Work out how many days your recorder holds with the CCTV storage calculator. The ICO also expects you to "delete the footage regularly or automatically", so set a retention period rather than keeping it forever.
• Know the rules if you record beyond your boundary. A camera covering a car parked on the street or in a shared car park will usually see more than your own property. The ICO says that if home CCTV "records beyond your property boundary, data protection law applies". Capture no more than you need, "install signage that indicates CCTV is in operation", store footage securely, delete it regularly, and be ready to respond to requests from people who appear in it.

Methodology

• Source. The police.uk bulk archive for August 2026 (https://data.police.uk/data/archive/2026-08.zip), holding street-level crime and outcome files for September 2023 to August 2026 for every force that supplied them.
• Categories. "Vehicle crime" (which on police.uk covers theft of or from a vehicle and interfering with a vehicle) and "Burglary".
• Windows. The year to August 2025 means September 2024 – August 2025; the year to August 2026 means September 2025 – August 2026.
• Outcomes are the "Last outcome category" field — the most recent outcome linked to the crime. "Court-related" combines "Awaiting court outcome", "Court result unavailable" and "Suspect charged as part of another case".
• Coverage. British Transport Police (not a territorial force) and Northern Ireland are not included. Excluded from the trend figures because of missing or incomplete months: Dorset Police, Gloucestershire Constabulary, Hampshire Constabulary, Northumbria Police. Also excluded from the outcome figures because most of their vehicle crime offences show "Status update unavailable": Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Excluded from the seasonal figures: Dyfed-Powys Police, Merseyside Police, Surrey Police. A force with no files in the archive (at the time of writing, Greater Manchester Police) cannot be included.
• London figures group crimes by the local authority named in the LSOA field. police.uk moves each crime to a nearby anonymous map point before publishing, so a few crimes near a boundary may fall in a neighbouring borough.
• District counts. The archive is kept for this study at local authority (district) grain, so a council's figures are every vehicle crime police.uk placed in that district, whatever the premises, and a rate per 1,000 residents appears only where the council's name matches the Census 2021 tables.
• Police force area pages. A force gets its own page when all of its months are complete, it recorded at least 1,000 vehicle crime offences in the latest year, and at least 2 council areas it polices had 100 or more. A council appears on a force's page only where that force recorded at least 80% of its vehicle crime offences. A change is called a rise or a fall only when both years had 100 or more vehicle crime offences, the change is at least 10%, and it passes a significance test that allows for the month-to-month variation of that area (quasi-Poisson, |z| of 2 or more); otherwise it is "little changed". A force whose figures moved 25% or more while England and Wales moved less than 10% is flagged as a possible change in recording. Rates per 1,000 residents use Census 2021 populations and are shown only where the force recorded at least 95% of the council's vehicle crime offences; because police.uk places vehicle crime where the vehicle was, at work and in town as well as at home, areas with many businesses and few residents show high rates, so rates are context, not a ranking. Council areas are named as they are today: districts merged in April 2023 (for example Mendip into Somerset) are counted under the new council.
• Counts, not rates, and not official statistics: police.uk figures are operational data and can differ from ONS and Home Office publications.
• Reproducible. Every figure can be recomputed from the archive; the method is applied the same way at each quarterly update.

Edition history

Figures quoted from an earlier edition stay traceable here:

Edition	Vehicle crime offences (year to edition)	Change on the year before
August 2026	276,112	-3.2%

Sources

• police.uk open data and API
• police.uk data archive and field definitions
• ICO: home CCTV systems
• GOV.UK: guidance on the use of domestic CCTV
• Neighbourhood Watch: CCTV advice
• Secured by Design: vehicle crime prevention advice

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Free to reuse: journalists, community groups and trade publications may quote or reproduce these tables; please credit Clear Security with a link (any rel is fine).

About this study. Compiled by Clear Security LTD, 16 Wimborne Road, Luton LU1 1PD. No police force or public body was involved in, or has endorsed, this analysis.