Report it to the Metropolitan Police, online or by calling 101, which is free from any UK phone. You will get a reference for the report straight away, and the Met says the formal crime reference number follows by letter once the report is converted into a crime report. That number is what your insurer will ask for.
Then do three things in this order: block the handset with your mobile operator using its 15-digit IMEI number, cancel your cards with your own bank, and erase the phone remotely if you can still reach it. Everything else can wait until you are sitting down.
This page picks up where two of our other guides stop. One covers how safe London is and how to avoid being robbed in the first place; the other lists the emergency numbers and who answers them. This one is about the hour afterwards, and the two weeks of paperwork that follow it.
The numbers you need
- Crime in progress, or the thief is still there
- 999 (free)
- Reporting a theft after the event
- Met Police online, or 101 (free)
- On a train, the Tube, the DLR or the Overground
- Text British Transport Police on 61016
- Fraud on your account
- Report Fraud, 0300 123 2040
- Your bank, if it is a UK bank
- 159, which connects to more than 99% of UK current accounts
- Your IMEI number
- Dial *#06# on the handset, before the trip
The first ten minutes, in the right order
Do not start with the police. The police report is the slowest step and the least urgent, because nothing gets worse while you wait. What gets worse is money leaving your account and messages arriving on a phone a stranger is holding.
- Borrow a phone or find wifi. A café, a hotel lobby or a shop will lend you a connection. Our page on free wi-fi in London lists the networks that do not need a UK number to join.
- Cancel the cards. Every card in the wallet, not just the one you were using.
- Call your mobile operator and ask them to bar the SIM and block the handset.
- Open Find My or Find My Device from the borrowed device, mark the phone as lost and erase it if you accept that you are not getting it back.
- Change the password on your email account before anything else, because it is the key to resetting everything else.
- Then report it to the police.
If your passport was in the same bag, that changes the priority order entirely, and our guide to replacing a passport in London should be your next stop.
Reporting to the Met, and the postcode problem
The Metropolitan Police takes non-emergency crime reports through an online form. It works from any browser, and it is the practical choice for a visitor, because 101 can involve a long wait. Call 999 instead only if the theft is happening now, the suspect is still at the scene, or someone has been hurt.
The form asks, early on, for the address where the incident happened, and it wants a full or partial postcode to find it. That is easy for a Londoner and awkward for a visitor who knows only that it was "outside a coffee shop near the big museum". Before you start the form, work out the location: look at the street on a map, note the nearest building number or the name of the shop, and find the postcode from the street. If you genuinely cannot pin it down, the form also lets you drag a pin on a map to the closest point you can manage.
Be ready with the time to the nearest ten minutes, a description of what was taken including make, model and colour, the serial or IMEI number if you have it, and whether anyone else saw it. If the thief was on a bicycle or a moped, say so, and say which direction they went.
Write the police report from your hotel, not from the pavement. The form takes fifteen to twenty minutes to complete properly and asks for detail you will remember better once you have stopped and eaten something. Nothing about the report gets less useful in an hour. Do the card cancellations on the street and the paperwork indoors.
Two different reference numbers, and which one the insurer wants
This confuses people every year. When you submit the online form you get a reference for the submission. The Met's own guidance says the crime reference number itself is issued by letter once your report has been converted into a crime report, so the two are not the same thing and they do not arrive at the same time.
A letter is a problem when you are flying home in four days. Give an address where you can actually receive post, which for most visitors means home rather than the hotel, and ask whether the number can be emailed. The Met also has a separate online route for people who reported a crime and never received a reference number; if nothing has arrived after a week, use that rather than filing a second report, which only creates a duplicate record.
If it happened on the Tube, a bus or a train
Crime on the railway, the Underground, the Overground, the Elizabeth line and the DLR is handled by the British Transport Police, a separate force. Texting 61016 reaches them, and TfL's own online reporting tool sends your report to whichever force should have it. Buses are Met territory.
The practical reason this matters is CCTV. Transport cameras keep footage for a limited period, and a report made the same day, with the line, the direction, the time and the carriage, is worth far more than one made a week later. If you were on a train, note which door you were standing by.
Anything simply left behind rather than taken is a lost property matter, not a crime. Our guide to TfL lost property explains how that system works and how long items are held.
Blocking the handset: the IMEI, and the caps that will not protect you
Every phone has a 15-digit serial number called the IMEI. Ofcom's advice is to record it before you need it, and the way to find it is to dial *#06# on the handset. Keep the number somewhere that is not the phone: an email to yourself, a note in your passport wallet, a photograph on a partner's device.
With the IMEI, your operator can block the handset itself, not just the SIM, which is what stops it being used on a UK network by whoever has it. It is a criminal offence in the UK to reprogramme an IMEI, which is why blocking has teeth here.
Ofcom also says customers of Three, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, EE and O2 should pay no more than £100 for unauthorised use outside their allowance if they report the phone missing within 24 hours, and that Vodafone customers who report between one and five days should pay no more than £500. Read that carefully: it applies to accounts with those UK providers. If you are a visitor on a foreign contract, roaming charges racked up by a thief are a matter for your own operator's terms, and the sooner you ring them the better. Our page on SIM cards and roaming in the UK covers how visitor lines work.
Ofcom also recommends registering valuables on Immobilise, a free national property register that police forces can search, so that a recovered phone can be matched back to you. It is more useful before a trip than after one.
What the Met suggests doing to your phone before you ever come to London
The Met's mobile phone advice is unusually specific, and two items on it are ones most travellers have never thought about.
- Turn off message previews on the lock screen. If previews are on, a thief holding your locked phone can read the one-time codes that arrive by text and use them to reset accounts. Turning previews off is a two-minute settings change and it is the single most valuable one.
- Make sure two-factor codes can reach you somewhere else. If every code goes to the stolen phone, you are locked out of your own accounts at exactly the moment you need them.
- Set a real passcode, not four digits you also use as a PIN, and lock the SIM as well as the handset.
- Back up, and know where the backup is. Losing the phone should not mean losing the photographs.
- Keep a few phone numbers on paper. Your bank, your insurer, your hotel and one person at home.
Do all five before you fly. None of them is possible afterwards.
Cancelling a foreign card from a London street
The number printed on the back of the card is no use once the card is in someone else's pocket, which is the reason to store your bank's international number separately. Most banking apps can freeze a card in a few taps, which is faster than any phone call, but only if you still have a working device.
The UK has a short number, 159, that connects callers directly to their bank and cannot be spoofed by fraudsters. Stop Scams UK, which runs it, says it reaches more than 99% of UK retail bank current accounts. That wording matters for visitors: 159 is for customers of UK banks. If your account is in Oslo, Madrid or Toronto, 159 will not find it, and you need your own bank's international line.
Visa and Mastercard both operate emergency services for cardholders travelling abroad, including replacement cards and emergency cash, but they are arranged through your own card issuer rather than directly. Ask your bank about them when you call; that is the moment to do it, not later.
Nobody from your bank will ring you an hour after a theft. Fraudsters read the same news as everyone else and know that a freshly robbed traveller is willing to believe an urgent call about their account. A real bank will not ask you to move money to a "safe account", read out a code, or install anything. If you are unsure, hang up and ring the number on your bank's own website. Our guide to common scams aimed at visitors has the rest of the pattern.
The travel card problem nobody mentions
If you have been tapping a contactless bank card or a phone wallet on the Tube, cancelling that card ends your ability to travel on it, usually mid-trip. Two consequences follow.
First, buy an Oyster card at any station ticket machine and keep travelling on that. Second, if you had touched in and not out when the card was stopped, an incomplete journey is charged at a maximum fare, and TfL will not refund one on a contactless card that was never registered. Registering the card in a TfL account, which takes two minutes at the start of a trip, is what makes a refund possible later.
A practical habit: carry one card for fares and a different one for spending, in different pockets. Our guides to Oyster and contactless compared and using a foreign bank card on London transport explain the fare side in full.
What your insurer will ask for
Every policy is different and we cannot tell you what yours covers, so read it. But the questions are predictable, and knowing them tells you what to collect while you are still in London.
| What insurers usually want | Where to get it in London |
|---|---|
| A police crime reference number | The Met, online or on 101 |
| The date, time and exact place of the theft | Write it down the same day, before you forget |
| Proof you owned the item | A receipt, a bank statement line, or the box at home |
| The IMEI or serial number | Your operator, your account page, or the original box |
| Evidence you reported it quickly | The timestamp on the online report and the call to your operator |
Two clauses cause most refused claims. Many policies have a reporting deadline, often counted in hours rather than days, and many exclude items left unattended, which can include a bag on the back of a chair or a phone on a café table. Read your own wording before you decide what to claim for. Our page on travel insurance and healthcare cover for the UK explains what policies typically include for a British trip.
Lost, not stolen: a different piece of paper
If you cannot say someone took it, no crime has been committed and the police will not issue a crime reference number. That is not the police being difficult; there is nothing to record. Insurers know this, and most will accept a loss report instead, which is a formal record that you declared the item missing on a given date.
Search properly first. Check the hotel safe and reception, ring the restaurant, and use the lost property service of whatever you travelled on. A great many "stolen" wallets turn up behind a sofa cushion in a pub. Black cabs, minicabs and ride apps each have their own lost property route, explained in our guide to London's taxis and ride apps.
Getting through the rest of the trip
You are now a person in London with no phone and possibly no money. It is more manageable than it feels.
One emergency banknote kept somewhere separate is the oldest travel advice there is. Buses take contactless or Oyster only, so an Oyster card with a few pounds on it solves transport. Hotel receptions will print a boarding pass. Our guide to how much cash to bring explains what a sensible reserve looks like, and money in London covers cards and machines.
If you had planned a day that needs a phone for tickets, change the plan. Most of the best things in London are free and need no booking; our list of free things to do is a good fallback, a market morning needs nothing but cash, and a paper Tube map from any ticket office will get you around without a maps app. If you are choosing one, our comparison of Camden Market and Borough Market settles it.
One last thing, if you are leaving London the same week. Station left-luggage offices cap their liability at £200 for the whole deposit, so a replacement phone or a new wallet should travel with you rather than in a stored suitcase. Our guide to left luggage at London's stations has the tariffs and the small print.
Frequently asked questions
How do I report a theft in London as a tourist?
Report it to the Metropolitan Police through its online reporting form, or call 101, which is free from any UK phone. Call 999 only if the crime is still happening or the suspect is at the scene. You do not need a UK address to report, but you will be asked for the location where the theft happened, so work out the street and postcode first.
How long does it take to get a crime reference number in London?
You receive a reference for your online submission immediately. The Met says the crime reference number itself is sent by letter once the report becomes a crime report, so allow time for post and give an address where you can receive it. If nothing arrives, the Met has a separate online form for requesting a crime reference number.
Can I use 159 to cancel a foreign bank card in the UK?
No. 159 connects callers to their own bank and covers more than 99% of UK retail bank current accounts, but it is a UK service for UK accounts. A visitor with a card issued abroad needs their own bank's international telephone number or its app. Keep that number written down somewhere other than the phone.
What is an IMEI number and where do I find it?
The IMEI is a unique 15-digit serial number identifying the handset itself, and your mobile operator needs it to block the phone rather than just the SIM. Dial *#06# on the phone to display it, and store it somewhere separate before you travel. It is also what the police record, and what a national property register matches a recovered phone against.
Will the police find my stolen phone?
Usually not, and you should not delay cancelling cards or erasing data in the hope that they will. Report it anyway: the report feeds the crime figures that decide where officers are deployed, it is what your insurer requires, and phones are occasionally recovered in bulk and returned to owners who registered the serial number.
Sources
- Metropolitan Police - Report a crime (checked September 2026)
- Metropolitan Police - Crime reference number (checked September 2026)
- Metropolitan Police - Mobile phone advice (checked September 2026)
- Ofcom - Lost or stolen phone (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Contact the police (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Call charges and phone numbers (checked September 2026)
- Stop Scams UK - The 159 phone number (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Report a crime or incident (checked September 2026)