This week's Methodist Recorder carries a letter from Methodist Preacher on the growing problem of metal thefts:
The Recorder’s welcome coverage of metal thefts from churches (MR 6 October 2011) highlights a crime that is beyond the power of any victim to resolve.
Methodist Insurance and English Heritage may offer advice which may or may not prevent individual thefts but the problem is much more deep seated. For example suggestions that church metal is specially marked is naive given the process of which metal theft is part.
Here in the West Midlands we are at the centre of the metal recycling industry.
It has many admirable qualities: it provides a free collection service of large metal items; gives people some work and income; and ensures that waste metal is reused. All benefits that Methodists should welcome.
However it is the epitome of the free market. I’ve had a nose round the scrap yards and talked to some of the collectors.
Metal collection is completely unregulated. Entry to the trade is easy - all you do is go round collecting metal. This can be done with a lorry but I have seen some desperate migrants from Eastern Europe collecting on foot and using carrier bags. It is impossible to tell who the collectors are. Their vehicles are unmarked and they are highly mobile. There is no way of telling whether their collections have been acquired legally or illegally, or a mixture of the two.
The loads are taken to the many scrap yards now to be found throughout the country. No questions are asked, though I gather there are furious rows about the value of each delivery. Weight is everything, its source, form or even the content of the metal is irrelevant. No records are kept of who supplies which piece of metal. Payments are cash in hand with all the implications of lost tax revenue.
Within hours of arrival at the yard the metal is simply loaded into a giant container and a few days later is on the high seas en route to the Far East. The detailed sorting and reclamation work is undertaken on arrival. Few of the more skilled recycling jobs are created here in the Black Country.
The only way the collection of stolen metal can be stopped is by regulating the entire trade. This is urgently needed. It isn’t just churches which are suffering. Power cables are especially vulnerable and many a commuter has found their journey to work disrupted by stolen signalling equipment. Entire communities have been without power or telephones when essential utility kit has been taken for scrap.
A licensing system would be self funding, ensure that tax is paid and go some way to preventing the disruption and damage caused by illegal collections. It would also protect the reputations of entirely legitimate businesses.
The impetus for such regulation has to come from the insurance industry and organisations such as English Heritage. The sooner this happens, the better.
