Delicatessen plundered for scrap twice in one week

Metal thieves are running rampant through Herne Bay and not even your kitchen equipment is safe, according to one trader. Delicatessen boss Steve Dansey said his fridge has been plundered for parts - not once but twice in recent weeks. He said:

"My fridge was delivered on a Monday. On Tuesday when we went to assemble it we saw all the aluminium brackets had been stolen. It was assembled on Wednesday and by Friday they'd clipped the copper pipes off the back, even though it was running!"

On Tuesday he saw a teenager sifting through items left for a second-hand shop and taking scrap metal away on his bike. Mr Dansey, who runs Butterfly Meadow in the High Street, added:

"He had a black bag on his bike for the scrap. It seemed very Well organised. He wheeled his bike to the end of the road and just Waited to be picked up."

Other shopkeepers say they have spotted thieves stealing metal strips from steps, and in January iron drain grids were stolen for their scrap metal value, leaving holes in the road. Police are working to combat the problem by visiting about 50 breakers yards and scrap metal dealers across the county. Chief Superintendent Steve Corbishley, Kent Police's head of partnership and communities, said:

"Metal theft is a national problem and one of the UK's fastest-growing crimes, and it's having an impact on communities in Kent. We've had church roofs and school buildings targeted, telephone cable and manhole covers stolen by thieves recently. Around 15 million tonnes of metal is recovered nationally each year, with a sale value of £13 billion, which gives an illustration of the scale of this criminality, due to the rising value of commodities like copper. We are visiting scrap metal dealers, and will continue to work on days of action to raise awareness and to target suspects when we have information they are involved in crime."

ed.targett@KRNmedia.co.uk

---

Butterfly Meadow Farm's shop is called High Street Heaven

at 80 High Street,  Herne Bay, Kent CT6 5LE

Former jet-setter finds the good life on the farm

The way Steve Dansey tells it; one minute he was a milkman, the next minute head of IT security at a major global corporation. Now he's running a farm in Whitstable and making sausages that he sells in his delicatessen on Herne Bay high street. It's a career trajectory so unlikely it makes you do a double-take.

The 52-year-old makes the move from dropping off bottles of semi-skimmed to scanning the files of international banks on the hunt for fraud sound disarmingly simple. And the sausages? Just a return to his roots as a butcher's boy and son of a meat salesman… He told Ed Targett how he ended up with thousands of pear trees, a herd of Badger Face Sheep and an injunction from Canterbury City Council...

Click to read more ...