Illegal Motor Vehicles - Guidelines for incident reporting.

When reporting the incident to the police follow these points where you can:

• It should be reported to the police on 101 as soon as possible, ideally from on-site with a mobile phone. This increases the chance of an officer reaching the incident.

· Please make sure that you clearly explain the offence that you believe is being committed by the off-road drivers, vehicle use, damage to land, if it’s SSSI land.

and give as much detail of the location as possible, use grid reference or W3W if known.

· If you know who owns the land please pass this on with as much detail as you have, please do also report details, registrations and locations of vans, vehicles with trailers that may have brought off road bikes to areas.

· Do not ask for a particular officer for that area, even though he or she may be known to you. You can ask for the incident to be brought to the attention of the Rural Crime Team, Op Lantern.

• It is only through the recording of incidents that they will appear on Cumbria Police crime statistics. So always ask for the incident to be logged and ask for the log number.

The Cumbria Police website will allow you report a Driving Offence:

Driving offences | Cumbria Police or you can Email 101emails@cumbria.police.uk including the following.

Time & Date

Location

Grid Ref/W3W

Footpath/Bridleway/Other than a Road

Direction of travel.

Vehicle Type (4x4/Motorbike) & Number of Vehicles

Vehicle Registrations if present.

Make/Models (if known)

Vehicle Colour & any distinguishing features/markings

Colour of Crash Helmet(s) Riders Clothing.

Pictures – In no way essential or expected and only if safe for you to do so.

Contact details of reporting person.

Eg: At 16:53 on 12 March 2026 I was on the footpath at Riggs Wood east side of Coniston (W3W: Madeup.phone.locked) when a single electric motorbike passed me heading north east into the woods. The bike was yellow and not displaying a number plate and the rider was wearing a pink shirt, purple trousers, white trainers and a full face helmet tiger stripe effect helmet. Pictures attached.