Leeds cycle theft hotspots revealed

Leeds has been named as the sixth worst UK city for bike thefts.

Cycle insurer Protect Your Bubble researched the country’s two-wheel crime hotspots, and found that 1,353 bikes were recorded stolen in Leeds from September 2015 until October this year.

The most targeted areas of the city were Victoria Square and Woodhouse Lane, close to the University of Leeds campus.

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Student city York placed highly in a list of the cities with the most bike crime per 1,000 people - 5.2 cyclists had theirs stolen, with the theft hotspot being St Leonards Place in the city centre.

Other cities with large student populations, including Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham, also topped the charts, as well as the east London borough of Hackney, which has a young population.

The research found that cycle parks close to railway stations were most vulnerable to theft, with other busy areas such as hospitals and shopping centres also targeted. Nearly three-quarters of cycle thefts are unsolved; yet in rural west Devon, only four bikes were reported as having been taken in the past year.