Soaring car parts prices and cost-of-living pressures mean no car is immune to theft
Underlining the U.K.’s relentless car theft epidemic, stolen vehicle recovery expert (SVR) Tracker Network U.K., working with police forces nationwide, shut down a record 78 illegal ‘chop shops’ in 2025, a 30% year-on-year rise.
However, warns Tracker, as one chop-shop closes another quickly opens elsewhere, with organised crime gangs acting with speed and scale to keep ahead of law enforcement efforts. In 2020, Tracker and the police shut down just two chop shops compared to the 78 last year, confirming the sophistication and persistence of professional thieves. Cars of every make and model, value and age, are being stolen by criminals to be stripped of their parts and sold on for profit, in a bid to capitalise on consumer demand for quality second-hand parts at an affordable price.
With cost-of-living pressures and consumer caution impacting how long people keep their cars - 43% of the cars on the U.K. roads now over ten years old - Tracker warns that the sale of illegally harvested car parts looks set to continue.
As well as uncovering an unprecedented number of chop shops, Tracker also helped UK police stop career criminals in their tracks, with 147 arrests made, surpassing the total figure for 2024.
Clive Wain, Head of Police Liaison at Tracker comments, “Although we have not won the war on vehicle theft, our close collaboration with UK police and law enforcement bodies means we are winning significant battles. A year-on-year rise of nearly a third in the number of chop shops found and closed is significant. However, many career criminals are willing to risk prosecution due to the substantial profits made through the illegal trade in stolen vehicles and their parts, which means we are in truth, playing a chop shop equivalent of whack-a-mole.”
The hidden whereabouts of the illegal chop shops found by Tracker and the police were uncovered as a direct result of Tracker’s unique combination of VHF with GPS/GSM technology, leading police directly to them. Critically, these devices are immune to GPS/GSM jamming, a method often used by thieves to mask a vehicle’s location. Not even industrial-sized jammers that police frequently find when raiding chop shops are able to match Tracker’s technology.
Tracker is the only stolen vehicle recovery provider with a formal agreement with all U.K. police forces, with most police cars and all police helicopters equipped with its technology. Continues Clive Wain, “By working strategically with the police and sharing intelligence we are delivering tangible results. This unified approach is not only proving highly effective in identifying and dismantling illegal chop shops, but also and crucially, disrupting organised criminal networks, helping slow down vehicle theft nationwide.”
