Where are coppers when it comes to copper theft?
On the 20.48 from Liverpool to Euston over the weekend, the train was delayed by an hour and diverted from its normal course. For the second time in a week, thieves had stolen large portions of the signaling wire – in this case from an area around Lichfield.
In high summer, the Berkshire village of Kintbury lost all telephone communications for more than a week, after thieves broke into the main exchange switching box and removed the wiring. Two incidents in which I happened to be one of many ‘victims’. The common ingredient – copper.
I had the good fortune to board the Liverpool train with a Network Rail work gang. They described the scale of copper stealing that is now consuming the network.
One orange clad worker described how the gangs come alongside the track, put an axe through the cable ducting, severing the copper, and then drive hundreds of metres down the line, put the axe through the ducting again and then simply drag and roll the wire into the back of a pick-up truck.
Our society is so dependent upon copper wiring that it is everywhere. It is everywhere in an age when worldwide copper commodity prices have gone through the roof. Voracious China is consuming much of all the newly mined copper.
By definition, much of the UK’s vast threadwork of copper telephony and signaling wire is in remote spots many miles from police surveillance. No one knows the true scale of what is happening. But anecdotally it is happening all over the country every week and the damage is costing the economy millions of pounds.
MP Graham Jones tells me on Twitter that he is trying to get the Metal Theft Act reformed to uprate the paltry fines available to the courts for copper theft.
By definition this is a remote and difficult crime for the media to follow and report. But my sense from my own limited exposure to it is that this is a serious economic threat to UKplc. The work gang on the Liverpool train told me that these scrap metal villains work in gangs and that some have links to international organized crime groups.
Follow on Twitter @JonSnowC4
Related links:
FactCheck: Why copper theft is the perfect crime
Rising metal theft hits UK churches and transport
Dramatic video of cable theft blaze