More than 80% of the UK’s tradespeople have had tools stolen. Some have lost months of work as a result. With thefts up 16% in a year, can the police and the government do anything to protect them?
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f 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.”
