Police may get new powers to stop scrap cowboys

Recycling sites suspected of acting illegally could be closed without a court order under the plans, designed to halt an alarming rise in cases of thieves targeting homes, schools, churches, businesses and railway lines.

Other measures being considered by Ministers include limiting the high number of cash deals done at scrapyards, which police believe makes the metal recycling industry attractive to tax dodgers and crooks seeking to launder the proceeds of organised crime.

But some of the proposed changes have been branded “bizarre and disruptive” by the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA), which says authorities are failing to properly enforce existing laws in an industry worth £5bn a year.

Home Office Minister Lord Henley will this week discuss the proposals with Deputy Chief Constable Paul Crowther, who leads campaigns to tackle metal theft for Britain’s most powerful police body, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

Mr Crowther, of British Transport Police, has described the crime as one of his force’s biggest challenges after terrorism.

In Yorkshire and the North-East, the force has seen offences related to cable theft soar by more than 83 per cent in a year – from 593 in 2009 to 1,087 in 2010.

Currently, scrapyards must comply with the 1964 Scrap Metal Dealers Act, which carries a maximum fine of £1,000.

Chief Insp Robin Edwards of British Transport Police said the penalty was a “drop in the ocean” compared with the value of metals being stolen, with copper worth in the region of £6,000 per ton.

Although the Environment Agency can shut illegal sites, Chief Insp Edwards said the law gave police no closure powers and allowed scrapyards to accept metal without asking questions about the supplier’s identity.

“The current legislation is truly ineffective in terms of dealing with the problems around metal theft,” he added. “It comes from a different time when metal had a different price.

“Churches are being hammered for their lead roofs, we’re seeing disruption to the railways and houses are losing their electricity supplies because of cable theft.

“Yet we have an industry which is really not very well regulated.”

Work on updating the law is understood to be at an early stage. The first in a series of meetings involving the Home Office, ACPO, the BMRA and other Government Departments was held last month.

The director general of the BMRA, Ian Hetherington, said its members would broadly welcome new legislation, particularly measures that would make it easier to identify suppliers who have sold stolen metal to scrapyards.

But giving police the right to close sites before their suspicions have been heard in court would be “outrageous”, he added.

Mr Hetherington said: “We find this bizarre and potentially disruptive to what is essentially a legitimate business.

“We don’t believe that the police, for the most part, have the knowledge or the understanding of a complex business, and the idea that any junior police officer could determine whether a business should be closed down long before there is any judicial process is, to my mind, outlandish and would be unacceptable.”

The industry deals with 15 million tons of metal a year, of which the BMRA estimates about 15,000 are stolen.