Consumer articles ~ Green-fingered thieves lead owners up the garden path

The Times, 11 November 2006

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As Britain's gardeners count the cost of hosepipe bans, dried-out flowerbeds, dying trees and water restrictions, many also find themselves facing losses of a different kind: a record crime wave in garden products, gadgets and decorative furniture

Green-fingered gardeners are being foiled by light-fingered thieves who regard gardens as easy targets. Malcolm Tarling of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) says: "The problem is that we don't take enough trouble about locking everything up at night."

This year UK gardeners will spend almost £4 billion on flowers, plants, garden tools, equipment, statuary and other outdoor items - £500m more than last year says the British Crime Survey (BCS). Yet one in eight owners will suffer a crime of some kind - whether it's the theft of a set of stainless-steel tools from the garden shed or the disappearance of a statue from the garden or furniture from the patio.

Many gangs steal to order. Mike and Laura Widdicks from Leeds woke up one day to discover that the 25 flagstones laid out in their garden had been stolen. A police spokesman says: "The culprits were a professional gang who knew what they wanted, knew the value of York stone and had ready-made sources to dispose of the haul."

Other crimes are less easy to pinpoint. Thieves who stole six koi worth several thousand pounds from a garden in Cardiff came back the next day to steal the pond. A South Wales police spokesman comments: "Perhaps they needed somewhere to store the carp or else wanted to sell the pond as a separate item. Who knows?"

Most small garden crimes are opportunistic, say the UK's insurers. A sneak thief passing a garden will take anything he sees that is unattended such as a bicycle or barbecue equipment. But some organised gangs will watch properties for days before breaking into garden sheds to steal the contents.

Rose Ward of Gardening Which? says: "Most people tend to keep at least £1,000 worth of items in their garden sheds, including new garden tools, teak furniture, foldaway gazebos, lawnmowers and bicycles all of which can be sold easily on the open market." The BCS says a quarter of the two million garden thefts a year are from outbuildings.

Ms Ward says: "TV makeovers and environment campaigns have made such an impact on us that we now see our gardens and plots as extra rooms or extensions of our homes, places where we can entertain our friends and hold barbecues and outdoor parties. As a result we are now willing to spend a lot more time and a great deal more money on outdoor products than we used to."

But we are paying a high price for our extended comfort zones. In 2005 owners made just over £430m worth of home insurance claims for outdoor crimes, compared with £374m in 2004 says the BCS. This year's figure is likely to reach £500m say the police and insurance companies.

Yet an estimated third of all theft victims cannot caim for garden crimes because they have inadequate cover on their home contents policies.

The ABI's Mr Tarling says: "Because people don't expect to be the victims of garden theft, they either underestimate the value of the items they buy or they forget about them, or even simply don't think to put them on their policies. Yet homeowners have on average more than £3,000 worth of outdoor products."

Insureres have launched a "green alert" to fight the outdoor crime wave. Halifax Home Insurance has published a list of crime hotspots headed by three northern cities Leeds, Doncaster and York.

The insurer More Th>n - which is part of the SunAlliance group - has raised its cover for garden plants from £1,000 to £2,000 and will pay out £2,000 for stolen equipment and children's toys. Churchill Insurance now pays up to £2,000 for a bicycle kept in a locked garage or outbuilding.

The Halifax says: "A thief can be in and out of a secured property in minutes. It is therefore vital that back gates are properly secured, garages and sheds are locked and in a good state of repair and any items kept in greenhouses are hidden away from an opportunistic thief's eye. We advise owners to be especially vigilant during the winter months when the dark nights provide perfect cover for thieves."

Randle Siddeley of Siddeley Landscape Designs, London landscape gardeners, says: "Garden thieves are getting ever more ingenious. So it's absolutely essential to have early warning systems such as lights with sensors on the outside of houses, alarms fitted to outbuildings that contain high-value items and gravelled paths and driveways so you can catch out the criminals before they can ply their devious trades."

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