Thursday 15 October 2009

Chislehurst in Bromley rules the UK for car crime

This alarming news for South Londoners from The Londonist:
London Postcodes Top UK Car Crime List

Chislehurst in Bromley is famous for its man-made cave system, but now has other connections to the underworld. According to new 'research', the town rules the UK for car crime. 3.8% of local motorists made insurance claims for break-ins or theft over the past year (the national average is 1.17%). Meanwhile, Ilford and Romford postcodes fill six of the top twenty spots. We're always a little suspicious of reports conducted by companies with an interest in the results (in this case a price comparison website whose aim is to sell as much car insurance as possible). However, we can't fault the data, drawn from 3.8 million claims and quoted as percentage rather than absolute number.

Crikey. Mystifying though it is (why on earth Chislehirst?), regular readers will know I've had my own car-related misfortune recently, not far from there...

2 comments:

Plummy Mummy said...

You could read the stats as Chislehurst car owners most likely to claim in the country. Maybe in other parts of the country people don't bother as the excess is prohibitive.

Raven said...

That's true, that's certainly a flaw in the conclusion of the research. I guess we'd need to refer to police statistics but even then that's just 'reported crime'. But it would be interesting to compare them (if one ever had the time!)