Keith Gooden
Welcome back to the Motorhome Matt Podcast with me, Keith Gooden, our resident expert – it’s the man who’s put his name to the whole shebang – Motorhome Matt Sims. Welcome along, Matt.
Matt Sims
I’m here. Yes, I’m real.
Keith Gooden
A star is born. Now, if you’ve been listening to the podcast over the last few months, you’ll know we’ve been talking about buying motorhomes and caravans. We’ve been talking about where you take them. You just had maybe how to stop somebody from breaking in on the drive. But we haven’t really gone into depth about security for your motorhome.
There’s a lot to talk about here, Matt. And there’s a lot of innovation as well. But let’s start with the basics, shall we? I’ve dropped my £50,000 on a motorhome. I’ve finally managed to get one.
Matt Sims
Well done.
Keith Gooden
And the point is I’ve got to put it on my drive or somebody else’s campsite. I need to know if I go out for the night to the pub that when I come back is still going to be there.
Matt Sims
Yes. Well, there’s lots of obvious security that you can fit onto a motorhome or caravan and some are obviously going to be very specific to a motorhome. So wheel clamps are obvious. I always take the view that the more obvious the security, the more likely a thief is going to go, ‘Nah. I’ll move on to the next one.’ As horrible as that sounds, you just want to try and deter them as much as you can.
Visible versus covert security
Matt Sims
So visible security is a great place to start. So wheel clamps, steering wheel locks, hitch locks if it’s a caravan, all of those things are going to deter a thief from making it an easy win for them. To steal a motorhome, you’d need the key ideally. So there is a risk that they’ll break into the house to get the key to nick the motorhome. If it’s got a wheel clamp on it, and it’s blocked in with a drop post – they’re a great idea as well – then they’re less likely to then go and break into your house to get the key.
Keith Gooden
Now, I’m not going to hold you to it, Matt, if somebody gets their motorhome broken into or, God forbid, stolen completely. But what are the basic things, the first things that I should be thinking about when I’ve parked up my motorhome?
Matt Sims
So if it’s a motorhome, let’s say, or indeed a caravan, it might have an alarm on it. And there are great innovations with alarms where they’ll text you if it’s gone off or there’s movement. An alarm is a fairly obvious easy thing to fit. But interestingly, insurance companies, particularly with higher value motorhomes aren’t that interested in an alarm. I mean, when did you last hear one going off and do anything about it on a car or even a house?
Keith Gooden
Well, people just think they’re bothersome, they’re a nuisance. ‘That alarm’s been going off all afternoon!’
Matt Sims
You just ignore it, don’t you? And an insurance company will often ask for a tracker to be fitted. Now, you can put a tracker on a motorhome and a caravan. And again, they’ll alert you if it’s moved. You can remote access the location of the vehicle and the tracking company will be able to do the same.
In our Motorhome Holiday Company, the hire business that I own, all of our vehicles have trackers on. In fact, they have multiple trackers on. And we can actually remotely disable the starter motor. So if one has been taken on a ferry, the first thing that happens is the tracking company is going to ring us and tell us the motorhome’s moving with the ignition off. If the battery is disconnected, there’s an alert straight away and the tracking company are on the phone.
So they are monitoring it all of the time. If that vehicle is on a ferry to France, and there’s no permission for them to take it out of the country, we can remotely disable the starter motor and it won’t start. And we can alert the police. And we have covert trackers as well, where the company that monitors them, well, they won’t bother phoning the police. They actually use a private security company that will go and recover that vehicle.
Keith Gooden
So private owners can do this as well, can they?
Matt Sims
Absolutely, yes. And costs start at 10s of pounds a month. They aren’t expensive. And there are lots of different types of trackers, ones that wire to the battery and are hidden in the dashboard. And they report on engine faults and speed and you can get telemetrics, braking and so on. If you really want to go into it, as a hire company that’s of interest to us. If you’re a private owner you really are interested in, ‘Is it where I left it?’ And if it’s on your drive, you can look out of the window. If it’s in a storage compound, you can’t see it. So you need to know that it’s been moved.
And you can set up what’s called a geofence. And if it drives through that circle around the perimeter around that location, you get an alert so you know the vehicle’s been moved and whether that’s with your permission or not. And insurance companies will often insist on a tracker of vehicles over a certain value. So it used to always be £50,000. That value has crept up a little bit for some of the main insurers, but typically, I think it’s a great idea even on a £30,000 motorhome. I think they’re a brilliant idea. Or even a caravan. It gives you that peace of mind.
But visible security is also a really great deterrent to any thief that’s intent on stealing it. So for motorhomes, there are some great security innovations, pedal locks, and metal locks that go over the pedals so you can’t actually drive the thing. Steering wheel locks, you can buy those online everywhere. You can also spin the front seats on a motorhome and fit a padlock through the seat base or a disc lock from a motorbike so the seat can’t be spun back around and it can’t be driven.
Keith Gooden
So just for people who don’t know exactly what that means, you can turn the driver and passenger seat around to sit at a table or face your guests in the motorhome. And obviously, when the seats are turned into that position, it’s undrivable, because you can’t see out the windscreen. So you turn them and this locks them into that position.
Matt Sims
That’s it – you’ve got it. And on a caravan, there are other types of security. Lots of the wheels these days have Alko locks where you put a lock through the aluminium wheel, and it locks it to the chassis. They can be cut off. Wheel clamps can be cut off, but again, they’re visible deterrents and cutting them off is going to create noise.
A hitch lock is a really good idea. So the bit that hitches on the car, you put a lock over it, they’re visible, and they’re a great deterrent. With a caravan, it’s very easy to take the wheels off, then you’re not going to move it.
I did hear of a story of a caravan stolen from a storage facility. And the police stopped it on the motorway at 60 miles an hour. And the wheel clamp was still fitted to it. There were sparks flying everywhere. How the criminal thought they were going to get away with that I have no idea.
Keith Gooden
But that’s the thing. It says a lot about the criminals, doesn’t it? Because they’re just desperate to get away at any cost and take your property. They don’t care if it sustains a bit of damage on the way.
Matt Sims
No, that’s it. That’s it. So it’s trying to make it as hard for them as you can. Physical security is the best route. So fitting a drop post is a great idea or trying to disable the vehicle as best you possibly can.
Keith Gooden
And there’s lots of innovation, isn’t there, in the industry about security. It’s not just about, as you say, the physical deterrents or necessarily the ones that you can see. And you’ve been talking to somebody about something really quite interesting, haven’t you?
Matt Sims
I did. So for many years, there’s been a product that’s been installed traditionally on caravans. It’s called VIN chip and it’s a hidden piece of security that goes inside the caravan that can be scanned remotely. They’re now available to fit onto motorhomes. And I spoke to Tim at the NEC show back in February this year. And Tim told us a bit more about VIN chip and what it’s all about.
VIN chip: Security innovation in the leisure vehicle industry
Matt Sims
This is Tim Booth. Tim is the leisure vehicles officer for the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence service. Is that right?
Tim Booth
It certainly is. A pretty long name, but there we go.
Matt Sims
I read that off the breast of your t-shirt.
Tim Booth
Yes! Actually, it is very hard to remember. That’s what most people think.
Matt Sims
It’s a big t-shirt.
Tim Booth
Yes. What’s it all mean?
Matt Sims
Well, that’s it. So I wanted to ask you, what is it you’re selling? So you’re selling a product called VIN chip, which I know has been on caravans for quite some time, but it’s now available to put on a motorhome. So can you tell us a bit about it and why a motorhome owner would be interested?
Tim Booth
As a – well, now I’m police staff, but I’ve been a police officer for 30 years, I’m here to promote people using it. Because what’s important for us, to disrupt crime, is just to prove that something that somebody’s got is not what the genuine item was, which then normally suggests it’s been stolen, re-identified and sold out often to an innocent purchaser. We’ve had that available now for caravans since 2016.
Manufacturers started to put the VIN chip system onto caravans in the UK that were NCC approved products. That has meant now that we can scan those caravans out on the road when they’re in hard to reach places, sites et cetera. We can get the identity of that caravan and what its original ID was. Importantly, behind that, we can check on a database who the keeper of that caravan is. Is it stolen, or financed? All those issues are available to us.
And on top of that, we have the keeper’s details. That can be quite crucial when it’s 3 o’clock in the morning on the side of a major road and you’re thinking, ‘May this be stolen, may this not be stolen?’ The registration number will tell us who the keeper is. But it will not tell us the keeper’s contact details. And we’re not going to get any police force to go out at 3 in the morning to knock on somebody’s door. That’s a resource issue.
So what we’re able to do, and it’s happened many times with caravans, is ring the keeper. ‘We’ve got your caravan here at such and such a location.’ ‘No, it can’t be mine. It’s in storage in the north of England.’ ‘ Well, if you’d like to go and check because we believe this is your caravan here.’ Checks. ‘No, it’s not there. It’s been stolen.’ They didn’t know.
And that, Matt, is the biggest issue at the moment, that people get their caravans and motor vehicles stolen from storage. They don’t know, the storage operator doesn’t know, criminals benefit and away they go with their pride and joy, really, and all their personal possessions.
Matt Sims
This is a different type of product for a motorhome than has been used on a caravan, is it?
Tim Booth
It is the same product in that it’s an RFID Chip buried with the VIN number. Same with the caravan. The VIN number on that would start for a UK caravan, SG which is our UK code. The VIN chip on the motorhome picks up the original chassis manufacturer’s VIN. So that could be Citroën, Fiat, Ford, whatever. So it’s the country of origin that made the chassis cab that somebody has built the motorhome on that drives that identification. But it’s unique to that vehicle product. So it could never change.
I know owners of motorhomes will sometimes put their own personalised plates on. We’ve had questions. ‘What happens when I change the number plate?’ It doesn’t matter. ‘What happens when I sell it?’ It doesn’t matter. It is based on the VIN number which the vehicle was born with.
Matt Sims
Which, of course, never changes.
Tim Booth
It can never change. The only people that change it are the criminals, to try and confuse us.
The VIN chip system
Matt Sims
What does it look like? What is it then? Is it a big great big sticker on the roof? Or what is it?
Tim Booth
This is hidden covertly in the product. Since 2019, SwiftGroup and Elddis have actually manufactured their product and included the chip within the build. So we know it’s in the front, we know it’s in the back, we know it’s in the floor. We don’t know exactly where, but they are locations where we can then read them with the scanners that are issued to police officers.
So what’s going to be available now, subject to provenance checks to prove that you are the owner of the asset, then you can actually buy into that and buy your own VIN chip kit and fit it to your motorhome. So it gives us the benefit of being able to identify it quickly.
Matt Sims
It’s a little sticker, which you stick in various places around the motorhome.
Tim Booth
A bit like an address label that’s an intelligent address label. And it carries that information as the details of that particular motorhome. You hide it wherever you want to in the motorhome, what I would ask you in a motorhome is that you hide one in the front cab section and one in the rear. Because unfortunately, we’re seeing more and more motorhomes now where they’ve actually chopped the original front out of a motorhome and put a different cab unit into the motorhome.
So if we’re not finding a chip reading in front of a motorhome, the chances are, that’s a new body that’s been superimposed, unfortunately, onto the original build. And in fact, that’s probably going to be quite a dangerous vehicle for you to be in charge of. It’s serious criminals and it’s serious money.
One of the vehicles that I’ve dealt with and that I’ve presented to the public here – a gentleman paid £68,000 for that motorhome. That turned out to be not genuine. In fact, the documents related to the vehicle were from a completely different manufacturer, a vehicle that was destroyed by a fire in Germany 18 months before this gentleman bought the motorhome.
But criminals will always jump on opportunities and when there’s a demand in any marketplace for a product, criminality will move in and take advantage. Caravans and motorhomes, not only in the UK but across the whole of Europe, are in massive demand. There are challenges to supply the product, so no surprise criminals jumped on the opportunity.
Matt Sims
How do you read the code, then, that’s emitting from the vehicle whether it’s a motorhome or caravan? How does that work?
Tim Booth
Police officers, stolen vehicle examiners, they’ve been issued by VIN chip with a scanner that specifically reads those tags. There is work progressing to be able to read those remotely if you’re passing fixed aerials.
I’ve actually done some tests and on the A1M at 60 miles an hour we were able to read the VIN chips in a vehicle travelling down that motorway. So that’s the opportunity for us to be able to live check and then check back onto the database, is this right? Is it genuine? Is it stolen?
Matt Sims
So hang on, you read this code as the vehicle passed you at 60 miles an hour? You were standing still?
Tim Booth
No, we were following at 60 miles an hour on the A1M with Cambridgeshire Police in a marked police vehicle. We got up behind the vehicle, checked it and the code read,’ ‘Check the database.’ Nothing was reported against it, so it was allowed on its way. Obviously, if it comes back as a stolen report, we can then manage a proper stop for that vehicle and it gives us opportunities to arrest the offenders.
Matt Sims
So the big thing with this then, Tim, is it needs to be spotted and be in a suspicious location. That’s the first key, is it?
Tim Booth
I think, Matt, if we say if these vehicles are caravans come to the attention of the police for whatever reason and the police officers attending are not happy with the identification that is being suggested, they will do something. With a motorhome, actually, it is probably easier than a caravan because if you see advertised a particular brand of motorhome and a number plate associated with it, it’s not hard to order a show plate and stick that on a motorhome that you’ve just stolen.
The visible VINs have been in the UK for a long time. They’re on the bottom right-hand side of your windscreen if you look at it head-on. Little numbers in a line. That’s the visible VIN for your vehicle. So why is there a beer mat or something pushed down over it so you can’t read it? All those things suggest that something might not be quite right. And when you do the checks, you find out, yes, you were right. It’s not the right vehicle. They’ve cloned it to a new identity
Matt Sims
Have the police actually got the resources to be pursuing this?
Tim Booth
Resources will always be an issue. But when high-value vehicles are out at night, and officers do have the opportunity to check, then those checks will be carried out.
We did have a reported incident in the Bedfordshire Police area whereas a result actually of an alarm activation from a caravan that was being stolen from a site, police officers in the area – acting on a bit of intuition – thought, ‘I know where they’re going to go.’ And they were quite right and as a result, 6 stolen caravans, towing vehicles and the organiser’s vehicle were all brought to a stop on the M25. And people were arrested and obviously property was recovered.
So that’s where we can bolt together the technology across the industry with the more technical tracking or proactive tracking devices, which would then link to the passive RFID systems to protect the consumers and identify their products for us.
Leisure vehicle theft in the UK and abroad
Matt Sims
So you’ve obviously seen a need for this product here in the UK. How prolific is caravan and motorhome theft?
Tim Booth
Caravan theft in the UK has remained relatively stable. There’s a bit of an anomaly this year for the reporting of caravan thefts because lockdown has resulted in a rollover of reports. Some storage sites knew that caravans or motorhomes had been stolen, but they weren’t sure which ones and who they belonged to. So only when the owners came back to the site were they able to say, ‘Oh, we know yours was stolen last September, October time, but we weren’t quite sure.’ So now the report can go in.
We’re not unique as a country in the theft of leisure vehicles. Demand for them across Europe is significant. And it’s a challenge to supply. So we’re in contact with Swedish authorities. Germany, we get a lot of stolen caravans that come out of Germany, brought to the UK to a market that is ready to buy those caravans.
Matt Sims
Wow. And is this product installed in Europe as well?
Tim Booth
Not at the moment but we are working. Knaus Tabbert is one that is using the product. But at this show, I’ve been able to visit some of the manufacturers, in particular the manufacturer of the cloned motorhomer I spoke about earlier, the £68,000 one. They are looking at an import with the UK. They’re working with their dealership network to provide for people buying their product, the VIN chip, at the point of sale so when they pick it up, it’s all registered and the VIN chip’s done for them.
Matt Sims
Do you have any statistics on how many motorhomes and caravans were stolen last year? I know that COVID has messed up the figures. But do you know the kind of numbers we’re talking about?
Tim Booth
Caravans in the UK – 600 sold a year. So if you go back historically, we were in the realms of 4000, 3500, 5000 units stolen. That actually led back in the late ’90s to lots of work by insurers et cetera to try and secure storage compounds. In 2007 and 2008, the Alko secure wheel lock was introduced. Working with insurers, that’s worked to reduce the level of thefts recorded.
Motorhomes are a really difficult challenge because of the way the DVLA record a motorhome on their system, unfortunately, if you report it stolen, that vehicle classification will be in the same pot as a Fiat Ducato, Renault Traffic or whatever that delivers parcels and normally is worth £2000 or £3000.
Matt Sims
It’s just a van, isn’t it?
Tim Booth
Yes, your £70,000 plus motorhome conversion is in the same category. So we cannot pull that data out. So I have to rely on anecdotal information I get from insurers. And we’re fortunate in the office that insurers will share information with us. Clearly, that’s quite valuable data because of risk and everything.
But because of the work we’ve done with them and the value we deliver to them, in a way, bigger motor insurers within the industry do support us by providing data. And for caravans, it’s actually quite interesting, because a few years ago, when we saw a dip in the number of stolen reports, quite a number of new firms came in.
Bigger insurers said to me, ‘Well, we’re seeing that,’ because, at the moment, they see it as a low-risk underwriting opportunity. So they’ll be in for maybe a couple of years and they go away. Because in those couple of years, they perceived that they would make some money because people wouldn’t be claiming on the policies.
The Central Registration Identification Scheme (CRiS)
Matt Sims
How do people buy this product? It’s called a VIN chip, is that right?
Tim Booth
VIN chip is the product. The database is the Central Registration Identification Scheme. Both products are owned by the National Caravan Council.
Matt Sims
So the Central Registration Identification Scheme is CRiS, which is how caravans are registered, and motorhomes can now go on the CRiS database.
Tim Booth
It used to be the Caravan Registration Identification Scheme.
Matt Sims
It did. That’s why I asked.
Tim Booth
There you go, you see. Yes, good man, well spotted. But of course, if you’re going to put things other than caravans on it, we need to make sure that it reflects what the asset is. So it’s now the Central Registration Identification Scheme. But it is in-house. You’ll remember back in the day that CRiS used to be managed by HPI.
Matt Sims
Yes, I do.
Tim Booth
But that all came over to the National Caravan Council. They took it in-house. So they have VIN chip, they have CRiS and they own the database. So you’re not looking at a third party for any inquiries. Everything is owned and managed in-house.
Matt Sims
Now, that’s great for us. We own a storage business ourselves, storing motorhomes and caravans, and we can contact CRiS and check the authenticity of a caravan. And now we can check a motorhome.
Tim Booth
Exactly.
Matt Sims
But only if it’s got this product.
Tim Booth
Exactly, only if it’s got that product on it. There is work in hand. Do we make Access Control link to VIN chip? If you’ve got an RFID system on an asset, why not make it work harder?
I had a gentleman here today. He’s got a fleet of motorhomes. He said, ‘I could put one of them on all my motorhomes so when they come back in the yard, it will automatically tell me it’s back there.’ For the future, probably yes, you will be able to. It’s a positive move forward for asset registration, rather than security products.
Matt Sims
And asset management, as well.
Tim Booth
Exactly, yes. When was it serviced? All those sorts of things. So you end up with paperless management of that particular asset.
Purchasing VIN chip
Tim Booth
So you can buy it by going online. The VIN chip website, you look on there, explains all the things that you need to do.
Matt Sims
Which is www.vinchip.co.uk. Is that right?
Tim Booth
Yes. Whether it’s a caravan or motorhome, the information is on there. If you’re not sure about anything, give the call centre a ring. They’ll help you out through the process of what you need to do, what documentation you need to produce, et cetera. Once you’ve given that and it’s confirmed your VIN that you want to register is valid, then they will look to get the kit out to you.
What I would say is that they will also do a background check on whether that VIN has been issued already. And if it’s registered to a keeper, they will actually do a check with that keeper to see if they’ve still got it. And that’s how we identify quite a lot of cloned caravans because people are trying to do that. Of course, you don’t get that with the DVLA, they wouldn’t do a retrospective check.
So what we’ve tried to do as police officers working with CRiS is build as many areas as we can into the CRiS database to help the police officer. So let’s say we get a stolen report of a caravan or motorhome. When the officer looks at the screen, which is accessible only by them, they will see where it was stolen from, the police force area, the location it was stolen from, the police officer who dealt with it and all the crime reports references and everything. That will all be there and available for them to prove it is stolen and there’s been direct contact with that force. ‘We’ve got your caravan or motorhome here.’
Matt Sims
And presumably the database, though, is only as good as the information that the owner puts in it. So if you move house or change your mobile, you need to make sure you update the details.
Tim Booth
It is important to update. And one of the things we did when we were filming was -, there was a caravan that came into there. A gentleman pulled up, we checked the car and everything. I went to speak to him and confirmed he was the keeper still. His mobile phone had changed. He was quite chuffed! ‘Oh, right. Yes.’ ‘We’ll update that for you no problem at all. If we need to contact you we can.’
But yes, it’s like any data, it’s important that it’s kept up to date. But that goes across the whole field of what you put on your caravan and what you use. It’s important your subscriptions for all the tracking after theft recovery devices are up to date. It’s an insurance condition. I’d ask people that they make sure they’ve done that.
We’ve just discussed checking your caravan. That’s your caravan. It is not the storage site owner’s caravan. If there’s been a storm or anything, get down there. Check it’s all okay. If anything is broken, the rain and wind is getting into your caravan, it’s going to cause some serious damage. And unfortunately, if it’s damaged and needs to go to a repair shop, they’re going to be quite a few weeks or even months repairing it. And that’s the loss of your caravan or motorhome probably for the majority of the season when you want to be using it.
It’s yours. Look after it. If you need help, ring people. There are lots of people that can help you. When it comes down to it, it is your asset for you to look after and manage.
Matt Sims
And look after. Yes, take care of it and fit a VIN chip to it. So the big question is how much does it cost?
Tim Booth
It’s the grand price, one-off, of £64.99 for the basic kit that will get your motorhome marked up on the register. And that’s a one-off payment for the life of that vehicle.
Matt Sims
So there’s no subscription?
Tim Booth
No, no subscription at all. You can upgrade to an all-singing, all-dancing, I suppose you could say, kit with extra stickers and microdots that you can put all around a motorhome which would also carry the VIN number. But to get in at the bottom of the tree, it’s £64.99.
Matt Sims
That’s a lifetime? So it never expires?
Tim Booth
Lifetime – never expires. It’s for the life of the vehicle.
Matt Sims
I think I’m going to talk to our hire team about putting them on all of our hire fleet. They’re a brilliant idea. Why haven’t these been on motorhomes before this show?
Tim Booth
I honestly think that people hadn’t realised the capabilities of such a simple system. When they first started with RFID in the industry, it was a very short range and people weren’t bothered with that. When the new chip came out in 2008 with a longer range, people thought, ‘Oh, that’s a bit better.’ 2016 with a long-range, it’s, ‘Oh, okay!’
We can read it from a distance. We can read it over fences, so if we can’t get into an area we can read it. When we turn up on a site, as happened in Norfolk and all the people around the caravan wanted to fight and stop the officers from getting near it, the officer with the scanner just stood back, scanned it and checked it. It was stolen and everybody got arrested.
So that distance capability that we’ve got with this RFID system has certainly been a massive opportunity for policing and law enforcement, not just in the UK but in Scandinavia and Europe as well.
Matt Sims
Really interesting, Tim. Thank you very much for unpacking what I guess on the face of it looks a bit boring if I dare say, but it’s actually fascinating. And I totally understand the benefit of it.
Tim Booth
It’s like lots of things. It’s the simplest of things that work. And that’s often the case, isn’t it really?
Is VIN chip worth it?
Keith Gooden
Tim there talking about the VIN chip. It really is an innovative product, isn’t it? But is it really worth the money for me to fit it onto my motorhome?
Matt Sims
I think so for the peace of mind that it offers and some of the features. The fact that it can be scanned from a car with both the motorhome and the car travelling, monitoring at 60 miles an hour from a different lane on the motorway – I think it’s amazing.
The VIN chip guys are working very closely with police forces across the country to recover stolen vehicles. I’ve actually asked our hire team to speak to them about getting VIN chip installed across all of our motorhome hire fleet. I think it is a great idea. And we’ll see if we can get that installed and in place.
Keith Gooden
And it means even if your pride and joy has been taken by some scumbag, it’s likely to be able to be recovered.
Matt Sims
Yes, that’s the idea. And one would hope quite quickly as well.
Keith Gooden
Well, thanks very much again, Matt for another great Motorhome Matt Podcast. We’ll see you again soon.
