The cost of rural theft fell 20% to an estimated £43.3m in the UK last year, the lowest annual figure in five years, but the value of stolen GPS units (nearly doubled to £2.9m), quad bikes and tractors reported to NFU Mutual remained high at over £9m.

Covid restrictions, beefed-up security on farms and more effective police rural crime teams kept criminals out of the countryside in 2020, but highly organised gangs continued to target farmyards according to the NFU Mutual’s Rural Crime Report.

“While lockdown may have locked some criminals out of the countryside, rural crime hasn’t gone away,” comments Rebecca Davidson, rural affairs specialist at NFU Mutual.

“We’re investing £430,000 in a wide range of initiatives at a local, regional and national level to tackle the issue as the criminals become more active again. And we continue to bring back stolen machinery from overseas.”

Rural thieves are becoming more and more sophisticated to get round high levels of security on modern farm machinery, comments DC Chris Piggott, agriculture and plant field intelligence officer at NaVCIS.

“The pattern we are increasingly seeing is of gangs who patiently watch farms from a distance to discover where expensive tractor GPS kit is stored,” he says.

“They generally return at night to steal, and are now using silent electric scooters to get into farmyards undetected and make off at high speed. Thieves are also becoming even slicker stealing quad bikes – watching for hours to rush into farmyards and steal them when they are left unattended for a few minutes.”

The biggest percentage fall in the cost of rural theft last year was in Wales (-39% to £1.6m) followed by Northern Ireland (-37% to £2.1m) and Scotland (-25% to £1.7m); in England, which records much higher levels of rural theft, costs also fell significantly (-18% to £37.9m).

Across England, the largest regional fall was in the Midlands (-25% to £7.9m) followed by the South West (-24% to £5.1m); and the East (-21% to £6.4m).

In the South East, the cost was down 19% to £7.1m with the North East also seeing its rural theft bill drop 10% to £7.8m. Only one region, the North West, recorded a cost rise (+3% to £3.7m).