Advice re checking whether bikes are stolen or not

Hi everyone - bit of advice please!

I have recently started working for a charity called The Bike Project which fixes up old bikes, then donates them to asylum seekers and refugees.

Our bikes come from a number of sources: individual donations, local councils clearing abandoned bikes from public spaces, landlords/housing associations, and so on. We currently also have a relationship with the Metropolitan Police, who give us stolen bikes in cases where their owners could not be located. Many bikes are registered in case of theft. When the Met passes on their bikes, they have been de-registered.

However, we are concerned that some of the other bikes that we give out could still be registered to their owners, despite having been abandoned or willingly donated. The last thing we want is for one of our refugees or asylum seekers to be found riding a bike that is reported either stolen or registered to another owner.

I want to find out what our responsibility is regarding checking whether the bikes are stolen or not – and how we’d go about doing it.
Does anyone have a route, or even better a personal contact, where I could find out what procedures to implement to make sure both we and the beneficiaries of our bikes are operating within the law?

Many thanks!
Claire

I am not a lawyer - nothing I write should be considered as anything other than speculation. You should consider advice from a qualified expert.

Apologies if you've already considered all of these:

Your liability here could be both criminal and civil - Knowingly handling stolen goods could get you in a heap of shit with old bill, and recipients of the bikes could hold you responsible for anything that happened as a direct result of the bikes being stolen.

Performing some level of due diligence on the provenance bicycle that you receive may mitigate these risks, and a transparent policy and process can protect your organisation from being accused of any shady business, or from the impact of any shady business.

That process might include (among other things)

• Communicating with local police forces to cross-check bikes against known stolen bikes,
  
• Having a cooling off period of a few months between receiving a bike and passing it on
  
• Only receiving bikes from vetted sources
  
• A process for handling bikes identified as stolen (such as taking reasonable steps to find the owner, including informing the police)
  
  

Ultimately, the test would be one of reasonableness - i) Have you taken reasonable steps to ensure that the bicycles are not stolen, and ii) have you taken reasonable steps to ensure that your steps are reasonable.

I'd argue that i) can be a relatively simple framework, and that ii) is as easy as informing your local police force of how you intend to implement, and obtaining legal counsel's opinion.

Hi TW

Thanks for your reply - yes, we have considered the potential world of pain if it was found we'd been dealing (so to speak - no money changes hands here) in stolen bikes, but it would never be knowingly.

What we really need is a reliable contact we can send all the frame numbers to for checking, or descriptions in case of custom builds (although I haven't seen any of those coming through our doors) ...I've tried to contact the met about the for advice too but so far no response is forthcoming!

Best wishes
Claire

If you are dealing with the met police, why can't they help you?

Hi Lynx

No reply forthcoming from the police yet unfortunately - trying as many avenues as possible in case there's some legal bike boffin out there!

Claire

Sorry, that may come across as being a bit abrasive, it is not meant that way.

If you have a contact at the Met, it would be better to go through them. There is also the cycle task force who maybe able to help.

Also maybe worthwhile to get the bikes security registered by the Met, the Met will come to you if there are a number of bikes to security mark.

This would presume a centralised database of all stolen / recovered bikes - this doesn't exist, and is likely treated very differently on a force by force basis.

Have you contacted the various bicycle registration companies?

You could also be brazen and ask The Cycling Lawyer for a freebie.

True true. I'm chasing all sorts of avenues, including the cycle task force. It's weird that although now there are so many re-use projects out there, no one seems to have an answer - most people I have approached directly have never thought about it much.

The cycling lawyer eh. I will investigate that tomorrow.....my internet won't let me now!

Watch this space!!