Met police break their own record for seizing illegal e-bikes
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- London's Metropolitan Police seized over 2,500 illegal e-bikes and e-scooters in the first half of 2026, surpassing the 2,241 confiscated throughout all of 2025.
- The Met's enforcement campaign targets illegally modified micromobility vehicles to improve road safety and curb crimes like phone thefts and robberies that police say are frequently committed using modified two-wheelers.
- UK law keeps privately owned e-scooters illegal on public roads, while legal e-bikes must limit motor assistance to 15.5 mph (25 km/h) and meet other technical requirements.
- The Met uses portable roadside dynamometers, or "rolling roads," to test whether e-bikes exceed the legal speed limit, making it one of only two UK police forces currently deploying this equipment.
- A single operation near Tottenham Court Road Station netted 29 e-bikes and seven e-scooters in one day—the seventh operation this year, with another five planned through the summer.
- Commander Neerav Patel, who leads the Met's e-bike enforcement, said police are focused on illegally modified machines used for criminal activity, particularly phone snatching; the Met credits the crackdown with a 14% drop in neighborhood offenses, a 23% reduction in theft from the person, and an 11% decline in robberies over the past year.
Why it matters: The Met is explicitly linking micromobility enforcement to street-crime reduction—police cite a 14% drop in neighborhood offenses, 23% drop in theft-from-person, and 11% drop in robberies over the past year, with phone-snatching singled out as the headline driver behind the crackdown.
