BRITISH Transport Police has led a national two-day crackdown on metal theft, which is up by 150 per cent and estimated to cost UK industry £360 million a year.

Potentially dangerous and causing ‘unacceptable’ train delays and inconvenience to thousands of passengers, railway cabling theft has become a high priority focus, says BTP.

During the crackdown, five men were arrested in connection with cable theft from Neath depot in South Wales and a man was arrested in Portsmouth in connection with theft between Cosham and Fareham.

The huge exercise involved 38 police forces across the country, with BTP co-ordinating the efforts of Network Rail, the Environment Agency, HM Revenue and  Customs, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency and British Metal Recycling Association.

The teams worked under the auspices of the Conductive Metal Working Group of the British Association of Chief Police Officers.

Covert and high profile operations concentrated on hotspots for transport of stolen metals, and on scrap metal dealers across the East Midlands, Wales, Hampshire and Kent.

BTP assistant chief constable Paul Crowther said: “Metal theft is a major and certainly not victimless crime that has potentially serious economic consequences for the country and impacts negatively on communities.

“Theft of signalling cable from the railway has increased significantly in the last four years, and we are sending a clear message to thieves that we will not tolerate their
criminality.”

- Two years ago, BTP set up a dedicated national squad to tackle cable theft and launched Operation Drum. To date, 235 arrests have been made in connection with 1,169 incidents of metal theft.