They marched from Brent Cross, north London, to Parliament Square to demand the government act to tackle tool theft

In East Yorkshire this month, a thief was caught on camera stealing nearly £10,000 worth of tools from a gardener’s van – then loading his haul into a waiting taxi he had called to collect him

He said: ‘We want stricter laws against breaking into a tradesperson’s van.

‘These are our offices. We work from them. It’s no longer acceptable. They need to understand the implications – mentally and financially – it has on us.

‘The vans get broken into – we’re out of work because we’ve lost our tools. We’ve lost our vans.’

He urged the Government to ‘step up’ and impose a ‘severe punishment’ for breaking into tradespeople’s vans and stealing tools.

A series of reforms to sentencing guidelines have been proposed in the Theft of Tools of Trade (Sentencing) Bill tabled by Labour’s Amanda Martin in December.

The Portsmouth North MP’s proposed reforms to the guidelines include adding theft of tools to the list of examples considered as causing ‘significant additional harm’ to a victim, and better recognising the financial loss incurred when tools are stolen.

Carpenter and father-of-three Stephen Baker, 31, considered suicide after thieves stole £12,000 worth of tools from his van in February 2023.

The SB Multitrade owner, of Hertfordshire, said: ‘It was such a violation. I started to panic about not being able to do my work.

Leicestershire Roads Policing Unit stopped this car which had been carrying thousands of pounds worth of stolen power tools, it was reported last year

The contents would have been from several van attacks. Leicestershire Police were running Operation Pioneer to target tool thieves

 ‘It really destroyed my mental health. I’d grafted and grafted and it was all gone in a moment.

‘For self-employed people there’s no paid time off – not for holidays or accidents.

‘When they take your tools you can’t work. I couldn’t buy more. I couldn’t do the jobs I had or look for any more jobs.

‘Everything I had worked for for 13 years was gone in five minutes and I felt desolate with no way forward.’

On the brink of taking his own life, he got a text from his son, then two, sent from his partner’s phone.

Mr Baker said: ‘The message was complete gobble-dee-gook, but it was a wake-up call for me.

‘Jacking it all in had felt like a solution for me, to get out of the pain and fear, but I knew I could never leave them behind.’

Todd Glister, a plumbing and heating engineer who makes social media and radio content about his work, told MailOnline that experiencing mental health difficulties after tool theft is very common.

Carpenter and father-of-three Stephen Baker, 31 (pictured), considered suicide after thieves stole £12,000 worth of tools from his van in February 2023

CCTV footage shows a thief looking at the lock on Mr Baker’s hire van using the light on his phone torch

The thieves popped the lock on Mr Baker’s van in just 22 seconds and emptied the van in four minutes

Mr Glister said: ‘You’ve got someone under immense pressure at work, financially they’re struggling, some people have just started out their businesses on their own.

‘Then they get their van doors completely ruined so their van’s basically a write-off. So, they have to deal with that through the insurance so they know they’re going to get stung next year when they renew their insurance.

‘Then all of their tools [are] completely [gone] and they’re having a bad day. You can see how it’s quite easy for some people to just say, ‘I’ve had enough’.

‘And I’ve had people say that they’re suicidal to me in my DMs and stuff in the past. And it’s gut-wrenching, it really is. And you just feel a bit helpless.’

Construction workers are particularly at risk. They are four times more likely to die by suicide than the national average, according to industry website On The Tools.

Of the UK’s 2.1million construction workers, 73 per cent have been affected by mental illness – making the sector one of the deadliest for mental health problems in the country.

In around the last ten years, 7,000 working in the industry have taken their lives.

Construction workers are particularly at risk of mental health difficulties. They are four times more likely to die by suicide than the national average – and experiencing suicidal thoughts after tool theft is common, a plumber and heating engineer said

The founder of rally organisers Trades United, Shoaib Awan, said tool theft was a ‘plague that cripples businesses – the loss of work, the loss of earnings’

A thief brazenly broke into a white van and stole tools in London, it was reported in 2023

Mr Glister was in despair at the scale of the problem. ‘It’s been getting worse and in the last ten years, it’s on the forefront of almost every tradesperson’s mind,’ he said.

‘It’s sort of the only real day-to-day anxiety that I properly deal with. I’m constantly worried about my van.

‘I always like to use the analogy of if someone was in an office, imagine just one day showing up to work and all of your equipment, computers, everything was all gone, and they just said, ‘Oh, sorry guys, there’s no more work now’.’

To try to solve the disastrous problem of tool theft in the UK, Portsmouth North MP, Labour’s Amanda Martin, has tabled a bill, which is going through Parliament, which seeks harsher sentencing for tool thieves.

The Theft of Tools of Trade (Sentencing Bill) would categorise tool theft as a crime causing ‘significant additional harm’ to victims.

It would also recognise more fully the impact of stolen tools on tradespeople – it can often leave their vehicles damaged and force them to cancel work if they do not have adequate equipment to do it with.

It follows the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, to protect against the theft and resale of trade-related and agricultural equipment.

This new bill will get a second reading in April – but tradespeople want decisive action now.

 A tank came to show support at today’s tool theft rally in central London

Protesters created a ‘go-slow’ convoy of vehicles to disrupt traffic and draw attention to their cause

The rally was organised by Trades United, a campaign group of tradespeople created to raise awareness of the issue

More than 500 of them attended a tool theft rally in London today, marching from Brent Cross, north London, to Parliament Square to demand the government act to tackle tool theft.

They created a ‘go-slow’ convoy of vehicles to disrupt traffic and draw attention to their cause.

The rally was organised by Trades United, a campaign group of tradespeople created to raise awareness of the issue.

Shoaib Awan, a gas fitter from Romford, east London, founded it after tools worth £8500 were taken from his van.

As reported by the BBC, he called tool theft a ‘plague that cripples businesses – the loss of work, the loss of earnings’.

He added: ‘Things have to change. The penalties and punishments have to be there.’

Along with construction worker support charity Band of Builders (BoB) – whose boss was at the rally along with two BoB vans – they have a list of specific demands.

They want harsher penalties for thieves, better security in public spaces, a dedicated taskforce for theft relating to tradespeople, better support for victims and a public awareness campaign.

The rally organisers want harsher penalties for thieves, better security in public spaces, a dedicated taskforce for theft relating to tradespeople, better support for victims and a public awareness campaign

Carpenter Mr Baker – who has received support since his tools were stolen to get back on his feet – joined the rally in London today

Trades United also pointed to the need for tighter regulation of selling tools at market and car boot fairs.

BoB chief Gavin Crane – who went to the march, having himself had his van broken into twice, despite CCTV – said: ‘The UK construction industry can’t go on like this – it’s beyond crisis point.

‘Tradespeople face this threat every day, their vehicles are their livelihoods.

‘Enough is enough.

‘The van rally will demonstrate the strength of feeling about this epidemic amongst the community of tradespeople in the UK.’

He applauded organisers Trades United for mobilising so many tradespeople to hammer home the issue to the government.

Carpenter Mr Baker – who has since received support from charities to get back on his feet – joined the rally.

He explained: ‘Power tools are expensive – you can’t just replace them.

Carpenter Mr Baker, who has experienced tool theft, said: ‘Power tools are expensive – you can’t just replace them’

‘The other things they take are hand tools, and little bits and pieces you have collected over years for fixing things.

‘Then there’s the stuff that has been handed down through the generations that has sentimental value but isn’t worth anything to the thieves.

‘The idea of losing my business for me also meant losing what I had built up to pass on to my own children – it felt very personal and was extremely upsetting.

‘I felt like the life had been sucked out of me.

‘I hear about thefts like this four times a day – five years ago you heard about it but never saw it happening or knew anyone it had happened to.

‘We won’t get this country built up if tradespeople aren’t supported.’

Mr Baker’s tools were taken from his Ford Transit van in February 2023, parked outside a hotel in Watford, Hertfordshire.

He was not allowed to take the tools into the hotel, he said, but chose a parking space where the back door of the van was obstructed and CCTV pointed at the side door.

Ben Forde, a father-of-two, had parked near a customer’s house in Harrow, London, and was only ten yards away, having left his van for under five minutes, when the thief struck

CCTV captured the opportunist reversing down a main road and pulling up next to the van. Wearing a cap and holding his hand over his face, he hops out to open and look in the van – before making several trips to and from his car to put £2500 worth of stolen tools in it

But despite these precautions, thieves popped the lock in just 22 seconds and emptied the van in four minutes.

When Mr Baker returned at 1am, he was devastated to see screws on the ground and his toolboxes empty.

Despite CCTV showing the culprits raiding the van and emptying its contents into a car, police could not catch them.

Even when they found the tools they thought were Mr Baker’s, officers could not give them to the carpenter because the serial numbers had been scratched off.

The father-of-three could not claim on insurance either because the vehicle was a hire van.

Difficulty identifying tools to return them to owners is a major part problem. Kent Police have two shipping containers’ worth of stolen tools at their Maidstone headquarters, all seized in the last year. There are almost 4,000 items.

But they say a ‘large percentage’ of them cannot be reunited with their owners – because they are untraceable.

Officers want it to be mandatory to register power tools’ serial numbers when tradespeople buy them to solve this.

Almost half (46 per cent) of tradespeople who were stolen from last year then became repeat victims within 12 months, according to figures from insurance company NFU Mutual.

A whopping seven in ten tradespeople have been stolen from in the last year.

Chief of industry website On The Tools Lee Wilcox said there is only one conclusion to be drawn from this: ‘Tool theft is a crisis that affects not only tradespeople’s livelihoods but also their mental health.

‘It’s an epidemic we can no longer ignore.’