‘A guy did a runner in a Jaguar’: the petrol theft scandal – and the garage owner struggling to stop it

Since the start of the Iran war in February, there has been a 23% rise in fuel theft, with more than £1.2m stolen from British forecourts each week.

Why aren’t the police doing more to apprehend the culprits?

A petrol station tucked away in the suburbs of Birmingham seems an unlikely place for a crime spree.

But this garage has become a prime target for thieves.

Some fuel runners are easy to spot, approaching the petrol pumps in face masks, but after a recent spate of fill-and-dashes by less conspicuous drivers, no motorist is beyond suspicion. “It could be anyone,” says Shailesh Parekh, who is on high alert, as always.

The 62-year-old owns six forecourts across Birmingham, and today I’m visiting his station in Erdington, a residential area about five miles from the city centre.

Parekh remembers a time when a motorist speeding off with an unpaid-for tank was rare.

So much so, it would be the talk of the station for months.

Those days are long gone.

Now, it’s a weekly and sometimes daily occurrence. “In the last three years, it’s been very bad,” Parekh tells me from the back office, where a monitor beams CCTV images from every inch of the forecourt.