Tonight’s programme looks at how police in Manchester are dealing with a huge increase in criminals who break into houses to steal keys to expensive cars and then use them to commit other crimes. Officers in the Tameside area of the city raid the home of a serial car thief, a man who has given them the slip many times before and who this time tries to get away over the rooftops of a housing estate.

Meanwhile police in Devon and Cornwall are tackling another mobile problem; drug dealers who use car to move their goods from A to B. The cops here use number plate recognition technology to identity the dealers and stop them, and tonight they find more than they bargained for.

The programme features the work of three specific car crime teams: The Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport, The ANPR Intercept Team from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and the Burglary Task Force from Tameside, East Manchester.

In Greater Manchester last year nearly fifteen thousand cars were stolen out of the estimated one hundred and seventy thousand stolen across the UK