Scrap ‘six-week weeding’ of stolen vehicle VRMs
Motor insurance loss adjuster Claims Management & Adjusting (CMA), part of the QuestGates Group, is calling on the police to abolish the stolen vehicle data handling process known as ‘six-week weeding’.
According to the latest data from the Office of National Statistics, as many as 350 vehicles are stolen each day in the UK. Any Lost or Stolen (LoS) marker placed against a Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM) must be manually confirmed by the constabulary within six weeks. If not, the listing will be automatically removed – weeded – with any check returning a ‘Not Stolen’ status.
Philip Swift, Technical Director at CMA, explained: “This archaic process has always caused problems but, presumably due to the pressure on police resources, we are seeing a dramatic increase in six-week weeding errors. We have raised it with the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) and multiple constabularies, as the implications are serious.
“For starters, cars not recorded as stolen on the Police National Computer (PNC) are far less likely to be recovered. They won’t get picked up by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras or spot checks. Even if reported as suspicious, a check will show ‘clear’, which obviously benefits the criminals involved.
“Weeding causes issues for used car buyers too, with diligent consumers conducting history checks getting false negative results. The inadvertent removal of stolen markers will also wrongly enhance a constabulary’s recovery rate, casting doubt on this important performance metric. As a final kicker, if weeding does occur, we understand reinstatement can be extremely time consuming – one recent case apparently required a 100-page document to be reviewed!
“The unfortunate truth is that every stolen car adds to the overall claims cost, ultimately driving up premiums for everyone. This is further fuelled by delays to the recovery process. At CMA, we track changes to key data related to stolen vehicles on behalf of insurance companies, including whether they come off PNC. We inform the policyholders and they are often surprised to hear such news from us rather than the police. But we can only provide this service for vehicles which are of interest to us, for our clients. How many more weeding errors are slipping through unnoticed? What we’re seeing is the tip of an iceberg.
“Six-week weeding is said to cover cases where the owner mistakenly reports a vehicle as stolen, or it is quickly found. We find these justifications inadequate. Now, given the rise in frequency, the process is clearly causing vastly more problems than it solves. It urgently needs to be abolished. In the meantime, if your car has been stolen, you might like to doublecheck after six weeks whether it is still on PNC.”
