A man has been arrested in connection with thefts from rural premises, after a van on false plates was stopped in North Yorkshire.
Officers from North Yorkshire Police’s Rural Taskforce are investigating the man in connection with offences including the theft of an all-terrain vehicle from the Pateley Bridge area last month.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 2 June 2020, officers from the force’s Roads Policing Group stopped a Ford Transit van on the A629 western bypass at Skipton. In addition to acting on intelligence about the vehicle, they noticed that its model did not match the vehicle registered with its registration number.
The van, which contained a set of vehicle ramps inside, had previously been reported stolen from the Dewsbury area.
The driver, a 33-year-old man from Bradford, was arrested on suspicion of handling stolen goods, theft of a motor vehicle, driving whilst disqualified, and conspiracy to steal.
He was taken into custody, and subsequently released under investigation while enquiries continue.
The NFU Mutual Rural Crime Survey in 2019 found that quads and ATVs nationally were being stolen from farms in large numbers, thanks to being easy to transport. It also found that tracking devices were the most effective security measures, once basic measures of keeping vehicles out of sight in a building with the machine secured had been addressed.
