Basingstoke East Neighbourhood is situated in the north-east corner of Basingstoke and comprises of Chineham, Lychpit, Old Basing and Sherfield Park.

Jan 2017:

Another month of low reports of crime and antisocial behaviour in the area.

Parking seems to be the most common complaint at the moment and we are working with Four Lanes School and local residents to see what we can do to try and improve the situation at drop off and pick up times.
If it is successful, we will have a look at other areas.

There was a shed broken into recently and two valuable bikes stolen.
If you have a shed, please consider getting an alarm for it and securely locking any valuable property inside. The questions at the foot of this message could equally be applied to property left in a shed.

Following a series of thefts from vans in the Basingstoke area, between 12th and 25th Jan, 115 vans were checked and 6 found unlocked (information and advice packs were left in the vehicles), which is roughly 5%.
From 03/09/16 there have been 65 vans broken into in the Basingstoke area (excluding the rural beats). If the pattern followed that 5% were unlocked, that would mean only 3 or 4 should have had no sign of a forced entry. However, there were 25 which is about 38%.

As with all statistics, they raise as many questions as they set out to answer but needless to say, an insecure van would be a far easier target than one that is locked and alarmed.

It could be that the offenders have a method of unlocking vehicles (there are tools easily available and affordable to assist with this)
21 were Ford Transits with 13 having no sign of damage to gain entry (62%).
9 were Citroen vans but only 1 had no sign of damage (11%).
Are Ford owners less likely to lock their vehicles?
Are there fewer Citroen vans so the chances of finding an insecure one are less?
Do offenders target insecure vans so that there is a greater percentage of insecure vans broken into compared with locked vans?

For the total vehicle crime figures since 03/09/16, 138 vehicles have been broken into, 68 had no sign of entry being forced (105 were broken into overnight).
Stolen property includes cash, phones, power tools, Christmas presents, clothing, handbags, wallets, sunglasses, ipods and even contact lenses.

Of the cars that had property stolen from them (other than number plates), about 50% were locked and 50% had no sign of forced entry.
The type of property stolen was similar from both locked and unlocked vehicles.

Please read the below and give it some thought, as it may well prevent you from becoming a victim and if you do, it could help us catch an offender!

1) If you have valuable / essential tools or property in your vehicle, would it cause you a problem if they were stolen?
2) If they were stolen, are they easily identifiable? If you saw them on a table at a car boot sale, would it be obvious they belonged to you?
3) Have you got a record anywhere of the tools / property that you own?
4) Would you be covered on insurance if the property was stolen from your vehicle?
5) How much money would you lose if you couldn’t work for a day or two and how much would a good alarm system cost for the vehicle?

If you do mark your property, make sure that it is permanent, easily seen and identifies it as yours. Either your name, post code or company name would be good. Consider burning it into the body with a soldering iron or other permanent method. Labels can be peeled off and pen can be removed with solvents / abrasives.

Use the Website https://www.immobilise.com/ to register all your property with photographs and serial numbers so if it is stolen, there is a record of what you had. You can register any of your property to your account.

If someone wants to get to the property left in a vehicle, it’s almost impossible to stop them as after all, every vehicle has glass windows that are vulnerable. If you had an alarm and it went off, would you be able to get to it before the property was stolen? Would it deter any thieves?