It is all too easy to forget just how dramatically the nature and scale of the criminal threat we face in Britain has changed over the past 20 or 30 years. This was brought home to me by the Managing Director of a motorcaravan dealership based about 20 miles outside a major town. He related how back in the 1970s, in their rural location, they were able to operate happily with open frontage, no walls in sight, and minimal security. Organized gangs travelling out of the big cities to try to steal a motorhome were simply unheard of - something, which sadly is no longer true!
For this particular businessman things started to change for the worse in the mid-1980s when a motorhome was stolen at night. This led to the construction of a wall to stop stock being driven away from the forecourt over night. The criminals looked for another way in, one night a gang broke in around the back of the site, having gone through a number of fields, cutting a hole in a farmer's hedge and exited with two vehicles. The next step for the dealership was to counter this with ditches around the vulnerable area. It was still relatively easy for pedestrians to gain access so - although vehicles could not be taken away - many motorhomes ended-up with smashed windows and stereos stolen. They also had to face a scam during the day with a ‘family' pretending to test drive a motorhome but never returning.
The result of all this is that the dealership, in its ongoing battle with the criminals, is now located on a purpose-built site with walls, a personnel fence around the entire site, sturdy access gates. It has also signed-up to remotely monitored, detector-activated CCTV (recommended by the insurers) which has already resulted in a number of arrests and retrieval of stolen vehicles.