If you’re on social media and have even a passing interest in home improvement, there’s a good chance you will have seen Kevin Tingley’s work. The 39-year-old decorator is known as Paint Warrior – and has millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram. He’s in demand, highly skilled, generous in sharing tips from his many years of experience and even has his own range of products on sale in the UK and the US.

But even with his social media army and branded brushes, he’s still not immune to the biggest threat faced by British tradespeople: tool theft. “It was Boxing Day morning,” Tingley says. “I was still in bed, my wife was on her way to the gym. She came running back in and told me that all the doors of my van were open.”

He immediately knew what that meant – he’d been “done”. Tingley ran outside to see the doors of his van bent out of shape, with the bulk of his tools missing and the bits that remained strewn across his driveway. He later learned from a neighbour’s CCTV that the thieves had struck about an hour previously. Tingley’s van was parked just a few feet from his house. “I was pacing up and down the kitchen thinking: ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ And then it hit me – I’d have to cancel all the jobs I’d booked for January and February.”

That was the least of it. On top of the cancellations, there would be the cost of fixing his van (the sliding door had been prised off its rails and other panels had been damaged), plus replacing the equipment. And not just brushes, rollers, ladders and overalls: a modern decorator uses expensive dustless sanding setups, power tools, sprayers and all manner of other costly kit. But without money coming in, Tingley would still have to pay his bills and the wages of his son and daughter, who are both employees.

“It’s been really shit,” he says. “It came at the worst possible time; just after Christmas, which is obviously expensive, plus my wife, son and daughter have their birthdays in January. We’d just committed to a car for his 18th. Nothing flashy, but it was a promise and we couldn’t go back on that.”

Tingley called the police. At first, he says, they wanted to just give him a crime reference number for the theft, but he insisted officers pay him a visit to investigate further. He lives just outside Milton Keynes and it transpired there were several other similar incidents in his neighbourhood that night. Police obtained CCTV footage, from which they found the number plate of a vehicle driven by the suspects, but more than two months on, Tingley is waiting for an update. He is not hopeful of a positive outcome, and has resigned himself to simply working flat out for the rest of the year to mitigate the damage.

He estimates the theft has cost him about £17,000, not to mention the many sleepless nights worrying that his business was ruined. He has also started renting a secure lock-up to store his equipment – another expense – to try to stop it happening again. While he is insured, he’s not sure if this theft is covered by his policy as the tools were left in his van overnight.

It’s an all-too-common story. More than 80% of tradespeople in the UK report having had tools stolen at some point in their career, with associated costs such as damage, tool replacement and lost work collectively running into the hundreds of millions. A 2023 study by Direct Line business insurance also stated that, on average, a tool was reported stolen every 12 minutes. It’s a commonly quoted figure by police, insurers and tradespeople, but tool theft was up 16% last year from 2024. Plus, many don’t even report their tools stolen after losing faith in the insurance system – because it’s too expensive or they’re unable to claim due to not meeting the criteria set out in their policy – or in the police recovery rate: about 2% of stolen tools are returned to their owners. That 12-minute figure will undoubtedly now be even worse.

Of course, tool theft is not a new phenomenon. Most tradies will experience it multiple times in their career (37% will have it happen twice, 23% three times, according to a survey by construction industry organisation On the Tools). What is new is the scale and frequency. Robin Clevett, a carpenter for almost 40 years, YouTuber and presenter on construction station Fix Radio, recalls the first time he had his tools stolen – just weeks after he had qualified.

“It was 1987. I was 17, I’d just started working and bought myself a Ford Capri,” he says. “All my tools were in the back, and I went to the pub after work. When I returned, the rear window had been smashed and all my tools were gone. It’s happened to me a couple of times since then, too. What’s different now is the volume. It’s industrial.”

It’s such a problem that Clevett has entirely altered his approach to work: he won’t entertain jobs in certain areas or for clients who can’t provide a driveway or off-street parking. He also takes a packed lunch to sites every day so he won’t have to call in to a supermarket – car parks are notorious break-in sites, even if you’re just popping in for a meal deal. Every tradesperson I spoke to for this article said the same: fear of theft is very real, and it’s causing a major shift in the way tradespeople are working.

“This is happening in all towns and cities,” says Insp Mark Connolly of the Metropolitan police. He is part of a joint taskforce on tool theft in the borough of Havering in east London. Earlier this year, Connolly led a raid on a property in nearby Ilford, where officers discovered stolen tools worth a conservatively estimated £2m. It’s thought to be the largest haul of stolen tools ever discovered in the UK.

It was the result of months of intelligence-gathering across the south-east in an operation known as Larkwood. Connolly has been working closely with Sgt Dave Catlow, who does similar work across Sidcup, Bexley and surrounding areas in south London.

A few years ago, Connolly and Catlow’s work was frequently taking them to car boot sales across London and Essex for compliance checks among sellers, and a picture began to emerge. Stolen tools were rife, often laid out on tarpaulins in stripes of red, yellow and blue – Milwaukee, DeWalt and Makita, the three most popular brands for tradies and thieves alike. They realised the thefts were being carried out not by isolated opportunists but by serious organised criminal gangs.

While it’s correct to assume the majority of incidents involve highly portable items such as electric drills, saws and sanders – “potluck items from van break-ins”, Catlow says – Operation Larkwood charted an alarming rise in the theft of more heavy-duty items. One recent theft saw surveying tools and even earth-moving equipment stolen from a construction site in Tilbury for the Lower Thames crossing, the £10bn road that will connect Kent and Essex via a tunnel beneath the river when it’s finished in the 2030s.

“When those sorts of items are being stolen, we know the gangs have been following surveyors and specialist contractors,” says Catlow. “We know a lot of those items are going overseas. Another tactic for the gangs is to hire specialist equipment using a fraudulent company and then not return the tools.”

Catlow is about to embark on a new role with the national business crime centre, a Home Office-funded department previously tasked with tackling retail crimes such as shoplifting and warehouse theft. There’s a huge overlap with tool theft, he says, pointing out that it’s the same gangs doing most of the stealing. They are mobile and change tactics once the police have some success. If the spotlight on tool theft becomes too bright, for example, they switch to nicking catalytic converters or copper cables from beside railway lines.

“At some of these car boots, you can pick up a reciprocating saw, and next to it is some baby milk, olive oil and some coffee. The gangs are into everything,” says Catlow. “The same gangs that are going out doing the vans for tools and cigarettes, often their other halves are out shoplifting, nicking the coffee and the baby milk. It does come together quite nicely.”

Another emerging tactic is for the gangs to arrive at a car boot sale before it opens to the public and offload vanfuls of stolen tools wholesale to other traders, then vanish. They also steal number plates from other vehicles to become untraceable.

Frankie Williams is a window restorer in north London and had his tools stolen in November 2022. He was about £3,500 out of pocket but only realised the extent of the problem in the weeks that followed as he talked to colleagues who told him their tales of tool theft. He quickly set up a Facebook page, followed by an Instagram account and website – Stolen Tools UK – where fellow tradespeople could go if they experienced theft.

Initially, it was about putting a spotlight on the issue and creating a space for solidarity, but it has grown into something far bigger. He now posts – depressingly regularly – images and videos of thefts as well as tips to stay safe to almost 200,000 followers. His campaigning takes him all over the country to meet affected tradespeople and talk to tool manufacturers and insurers. “This is just what it’s like being a tradesperson in 2026,” says Williams. “It’s tough enough out there as it is, and this just squeezes the trades more and more.”

It has become so endemic that many tool manufacturers have policies in place to replace in-warranty stolen tools at a discounted rate. A spokesperson for Mirka, maker of high-end sanders, says: “Our stolen tool support policy sends a clear message to users that they are not on their own when things go wrong. This is a serious issue that causes costly downtime and unexpected financial strain, and we want to help people get back to work faster.”

Williams isn’t the only campaigner. Shining a light on these car boot sales became a preoccupation for the plumber Shoaib Awan – The Gas Expert on social media – when he became the victim of tool theft nearly three years ago. Outraged by the incident and thousands out of pocket, he started an online petition calling for the government (then the Conservatives) to act. It achieved 46,000 signatures and was well on its way to the requisite 100,000 to be discussed in the Commons, but a change in government when Labour took office meant the petition was taken down.

He then founded a campaign group, Trades United, and organised some direct action. In June 2024, he hired a tank, gathered 200 tradies in their vans and drove in convoy from Brent Cross in north London to Parliament Square, where they blocked the roads. In February 2025, he did it again, and more than doubled the size of the protest. He also raised £10,000 to distribute among victims and has since won a string of awards for his work highlighting the issue. It was through Awan’s work that a number of MPs, including Reform’s Robert Jenrick, have come to support the issue and call for legislation to ban car boot sales from selling power tools.

Awan celebrated a small victory last month as organisers of Hounslow Heath car boot put up signs saying the sale of power tools is prohibited. He is hoping other sites follow suit, and that the government takes more concrete steps soon.

There’s a feeling among the many tradespeople I spoke to that they are on their own, and that the government is not interested in dealing with the problem. Whether or not that’s true, considering that the construction industry accounts for about 9% of the UK workforce and brings around £130bn to the economy each year, you might expect stamping it out to be a vote-winning priority for any party.

And it’s not just car boot sales that have been infiltrated. Catlow talks of high-street pawnbroker Cash Converters being used by thieves to offload tools: “They’ve accepted that they’ve got an issue and they’re looking at policy changes.” A spokesperson for Cash Converters said: “Cash Converters UK takes the issue of stolen goods extremely seriously. Every item we buy or sell undergoes a rigorous identification and verification process in line with the secondhand dealer legislation, Consumer Rights Act and money-laundering regulations as well as our own strict internal policies and procedures.”

Tougher sentencing for criminals is something every interviewee wants to see. There are hopes that recent changes to the Sentencing Act 2026, championed by, among others, the Labour MP for Portsmouth North, Amanda Martin, will have an effect. The legal change encourages judges to take emotional distress and loss of livelihood caused by tool theft into consideration when handing down sentences.

In Ireland, where tool theft is a similar-sized problem, a mandatory three-year jail sentence for those caught stealing trade tools has been proposed by Fine Gael’s PJ Murphy, a senator from Galway. The amendment recently passed the second of five stages before it can become law.

The Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey launched Operation Ironclad earlier this year, the party’s campaign to make stopping tool theft a priority, underpinned by tougher sentencing, stricter rules on sales and calls for van manufacturers to install security measures as standard. (Some of these changes are already on the way – for example, Catlow tells me, from February next year, all van manufacturers will be required to fit new vehicles with alarms in the rear, not just the cabin.)

As the police are making progress and the government looks to be, finally, taking the problem seriously, Clevett, the carpenter, wants everyone to shun the secondhand market, no matter how good a deal might appear at first. “It’s just fuelling the thefts. Hopefully no DIYer will buy them, either.”

Awan points out that stolen tools are easy to spot – they will be absolutely battered as a result of their constant use before being stolen. “Tradespeople love their tools, and use them until they break,” he says. “You’ll get your garage clearances, like when a relative dies or something, but those tools look very different to a tradie’s tool. It’s unusual that they’d be for sale legitimately.”

It’s easy to think the situation is hopeless but Connolly and Catlow point to things that can be done to help. Tool marking is something everyone I spoke to mentions (and not simply writing your initials on a drill in black Sharpie, as is commonly the case). They say they are pleading with people in the construction trade to mark their tools with SelectaDNA, a substance that gives a tool a unique code when sprayed on, which helps police reunite recovered items with their owners. They regularly hand out free kits at events. Proving that it works, an expensive tool called a fibre optic splicer was returned last month to Openreach after being stolen and discovered by Connolly and Catlow’s team in the Ilford raid.

Gary Ross is CEO of Blip insurance, a relatively new company that specialises in cover for small businesses. He, as you might imagine, believes insurance is vital for a tradesperson, and that, along with upgrading any van locks or installing a secure cage in a van, the best thing a tradie could do is to take an afternoon to read through their policy documents.

“Insurers pay out on about 97% of valid, qualifying claims, so it’s not pointless. But it is vital that people take an itemised inventory of their tools,” he says. “Also, keep the receipts and take photos of the tools to help with any insurance claim. Be canny, and take some ownership. It might seem boring but it would take a weekend and could dramatically change the outcome if the worst happens.”

Proving that a blended approach of awareness, tool-marking and police action works is Hertfordshire, just north of London. The county was once hostage to tool theft, but figures have been falling for three years in a row, dropping further during the first few months of 2026.

Jonathan Ash-Edwards is Hertfordshire’s police and crime commissioner. “So much of the work we’ve done is awareness,” he says. “This is something that can, in part, be prevented. So we’ve been encouraging people not to leave tools in their vans, in their vehicles, wherever possible.”

Of course, that isn’t always practical given how much most tradespeople have in their vans. Plus, many thefts happen during the day, when they’re working, or visiting a prospective client to provide a quote.

“We know this is targeted,” continues Ash-Edwards, “so we’ve done a lot of work around understanding particular locations, such as hotels, for example, where a fair amount of tools are stolen from vans that are parked up for the night.” Premier Inn, for example, is trialling a secure parking scheme involving enclosed parking spaces, CCTV and extra lighting.

“We can sometimes have too passive a view about crime – that it’s just something people have to put up with. But it is not inevitable. And we have the data to show that when you focus on taking away opportunity for the thefts, the number of incidents goes down.

“This is, ultimately, about people’s livelihoods,” says Ash-Edwards. “Tradespeople should be able to get up in the morning with a busy day of work ahead of them and not have to worry whether their tools have been nicked overnight. We owe it to them for there to be a consistent focus on it.”