Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department provides to police forces on the treatment of fuel theft incidents under the Theft Act 1978; and what steps she is taking to ensure that small independent retailers in the Lewes constituency receive appropriate police support in response to such offences.

This Government is committed to tackling the theft of fuel from forecourts.

A new service has been developed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) allowing fuel retailers and their agents to request information to allow civil recovery of costs when motorists drive away from fuel stations without paying for the fuel taken.

The service will allow the contact details of the registered keeper of the vehicle concerned to be provided via secure electronic links. This offers improvements over the existing manual service, providing a quicker and more efficient service to help recover costs. This change has been driven by the police-led National Business Crime Centre and Police Crime Prevention Initiatives (PCPI), working closely with the DVLA.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will ensure that every community in England and Wales will have named and contactable officers dealing with local issues, and that neighbourhood teams spend the majority of their time in their communities providing visible patrols and engaging with local communities and businesses. This will be supported by the delivery of up to an additional 3000 officers into neighbourhood teams by Spring next year, as part of our ambition to deliver 13,000 neighbourhood officers into police forces across England and Wales by the end of this parliament.

Chief Constables have operational independence to tackle the crimes that matter most to their communities.