Children receiving e-bikes for Christmas contributed to rise in motoring offences

Ted Peskett, local democracy reporter

Children being given e-bikes for Christmas was partly to blame for a rise in motoring offences among youngsters in Cardiff, according to a city council official.

Cardiff Council’s operational manager for youth justice service, Angharad Thomas, spoke to members of the local authority’s children and young people scrutiny committee at a meeting on Tuesday, April 8.

During the meeting, a co-opted member of the scrutiny committee asked about council statistics which show a shift in the most common type of offence among young people between October and December 2024 from ‘violence against the person’ to ‘motoring offences’.

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Motoring offences

Co-opted member of the children and young people scrutiny committee, Carol Cobert, asked if ‘motoring offences’ covered electric bikes as well as cars.

Ms Thomas responded: “It absolutely does and it covers the electric scooters as well.

“There was a huge spike probably the year before last where it really started coming to our attention where we had lots of young children being given these bikes as presents by parents perhaps who didn’t understand the legalities around that.”

A Cardiff youth justice service performance report for quarter three (October to December 2024) includes a table showing offence types committed by young people that lead to a referral the Divert service.

The table shows that 27 offences in quarter three (32%) were ‘motoring offences’ and 23 were ‘violence against the person’ offences.

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Drugs

The next most common offences for this period were ‘drugs’ (12) and ‘theft and handling stolen goods’ (10).

Divert works in partnership with Cardiff youth justice service and is aimed at children and young people aged 10-17 who have been arrested for a low-level offence.

The service works with children and young people to prevent them from committing further offences.

Ms Thomas went on to tell scrutiny committee members that Divert and the youth justice service is trying to introduce a programme that allows children to work with them “outside of that court arena”.

She added: “It is around educating them and educating their parents, so a lot of young children are coming through to us now.

“They are getting the support, they are getting the education, they are getting the advice, but they are not necessarily getting criminalised for Christmas presents that they may have received and they weren’t aware of the legalities of that.

“There has actually been a reduction in young people coming to us for electric bikes and electric scooters.

“We may find while we are working with children that they do have them and then we are giving advice and guidance and… police officers go… out and [are] quite often removing them from [the child’s] property.

“They are getting destroyed, parents are getting suitable education advice in response to that as well.”

The youth justice report states: “Divert continue to utilise the Driving Change programme to respond to these offences, which is a multi-agency intervention aimed to address dangerous and unsafe driving.”