Cable Thieves Knock Out Openreach’s Broadband in Shenley

Openreach UK has confirmed that around 970 premises (homes and businesses) in the village of Shenley (Hertfordshire), near Watford, were impacted late last month after copper thieves ripped 1,400 metres worth of the operator’s cable out of the ground, which has so far taken several weeks to fully resolve.

According to the Watford Observer, the cable was stolen from the Radlett Lane area between 19th and 20th August (Friday and Saturday), which naturally disrupted local broadband and phone services. The high price of copper tends to fuel such activity and, sadly, the perpetrators never have any regard for the harm they cause to locals, some of which will be dependent upon the vital communication services provided.

Crimes like this, which are more generally referenced as ‘Metal Theft‘, have become increasingly rampant over the past 2-3 years and are often committed by organised gangs. Sadly, it’s not uncommon to see a string of attacks like this hit a similar area before it starts to subside as the gang(s) move on to target a different region – or as a result of increased public awareness, police activity and Openreach’s security enhancements (e.g. CCTV).

Sadly, the UK’s existing security and legal measures (e.g. the 2013 Scrap Metal Dealers Act) no longer appear to be as effective as they once were at deterring such activity.

An Openreach Spokesperson said:

“These attacks on our network have caused significant damage and unacceptable disruption to the lives of people through the loss of phone and broadband services.

Our engineers have been working tirelessly to get customers back into service, reconnecting each line one by one. This complex work will be ongoing until services are fully restored.”

The rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband networks should, eventually, help to mitigate such thefts as fibre has no major value to thieves. But this won’t completely stop the problem from occurring in the short to medium-term because fibre and copper cables often share some of the same ducts and the thieves sometimes mistakenly pull fibre out of the ground too.

Openreach has a partnership with Crimestoppers for information to be given anonymously to the charity about cable thefts and rewards are often offered if it leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. If you have any information on these incidents, please contact them 100% anonymously on 0800 555 111 or use their anonymous online form.

You can alternatively contact Herts police herts.police.uk/report, quoting crime reference 41/67397/22.