Thefts of metal from railways, power and phone networks in London rose by about a third last year, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics last week.
The Metropolitan Police recorded 124 infrastructure metal thefts in the year to March 2026, up from 91 the year before. All metal theft in London rose by 41%, from 196 offences to 276. Across England and Wales, infrastructure metal theft rose by 15%, while other kinds of metal theft fell.
Security company VPS says the figures only show part of the cost. Its new white paper, The Cost of Darkness, finds that the value of the stolen metal is almost always the smallest cost in an incident. In south Wales, thieves took about £2,000 of copper cable from the Core Valley Lines in a week, and the repairs cost more than £750,000.
The clocks went back at the weekend, and VPS’s own data shows the risk rising. At the sites it protects, reports of burglary and theft have gone up by more than half between October and December in each of the last two years.
Seetan Varsani, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, at VPS, said: “The police count the thefts, but nobody counts what stops working afterwards: the trains that don’t run, the power that goes off, the business that can’t open. One stolen cable in London can stop thousands of journeys, and the long nights from now until spring are when thieves have the most time and cover.”
