Sir – It seems a little disingenuous of the police to be shifting the blame for cycle theft on cyclists who don’t lock their bikes to fixed structures or use secure locks (Report, August 5).

My daughter’s very ordinary, oldish bike was stolen within the space of a few hours on a recent Saturday evening — it was locked with a sturdy motorcycle chain to a fixture on the front of a house in Hayfield Road. The chain had been cut as though it was butter. The immediate police response, when I reported it, was to ask if there was CCTV in the area.

The scale of theft reported and this kind of incident suggests to me organised crime, which is likely to be dealt with by investigative activity on the part of the police rather than reliance on CCTV.

I suspect we are all wasting our time reporting these kinds of thefts and the lack of any attempt to deal with it by the police is directly related to the enormously high insurance premiums one has to pay these days on bicycles.

We no longer insure our bikes and as my daughter commented ‘it’s just not worth having an even quarter nice bike because it will always be stolen in Oxford’. I expect she’ll be learning to drive soon then.

Ann Furtado, Oxford