Openreach UK Highlights Mass of Copper Cable Thefts in Rutland

The growing national scourge of copper telecoms cable theft has raised its ugly head again, this time in Rutland (England), after Openreach (BT) highlighted that their local broadband ISP and phone network had – over the past few months – been struck multiple times by the criminal activity. But arrests are being made.

The operator said their network in Rutland had been targeted by criminals on a number of occasions – including at Barrowden, Clipsham, Morcott, North Luffenham, and Uppingham – often leaving hundreds of people without working phone lines for an extended period, although they claim broadband has “continued to operate as normal” (this is not always the case).

Overall, the aforementioned thefts have required engineers to replace around 9km of cable, which often requires slow and expensive engineering work to correct. The high price of copper tends to fuel such activity, although it should be said that this has suffered a sharp fall since April 2022, albeit still hovering around a historically high level (i.e. it was peaking at around $10,000 per mt, but has recently fallen back to $7,500).

Sadly, the perpetrators of such crimes never have any regard for the harm they cause to residents, some of which are dependent upon the vital communication services. The situation is made worse by the fact that it’s common to see a string of attacks like this hit the same area before starting to subside as the gang(s) move on – often as a result of increased public awareness, police activity and Openreach’s security enhancements (e.g. CCTV cameras).

Metal thefts like this are now such a common occurrence across the UK that we no longer report on it as often, as if we did, there would probably be a couple of new articles on it almost every single week, such is the current scale of the problem. Suffice to say, the existing security and legal measures (e.g. the 2013 Scrap Metal Dealers Act) are no longer effective at deterring such activity.

Richard Ginnaw, Openreach’s Security Team, said:

“We take cable theft very seriously. It’s hugely disruptive for people living in the areas affected, as people across Rutland have found out in recent months. It also involves a vast amount of engineering cost, resource and time to carry out repairs.

Openreach works closely with police and we’ve got a range of security deterrents in place throughout the county and across the UK, with the aim of catching those responsible.

Along with making our infrastructure as secure as possible, the whole of Openreach’s network is alarmed and monitored 24 hours a day. This tells us and the police if anyone interferes with our cables illegally – and enables us to respond quickly to restore services as soon as possible.

We’re not the only industry or utility being targeted by metal thieves and we’re trying to tackle this collectively by working closely with the National Crime Agency, British Transport Police, Network Rail, the National Infrastructure Crime Reduction Partnership and the energy sectors.”

The good news is that the police and Openreach have recently started to have more success in actually arresting some of those who take part in these crimes, which perhaps partly reflects the fact that regional police forces are now starting to target their Serious and Organised Crime Units (SOCU) toward the activity.

For example, in August 2022 four men were arrested in relation to cable thefts that occurred around North Yorkshire. Arrests have also taken place in South Norfolk and three men were arrested this week in Essex, which relates to a huge £1m cable theft investigation that covers 25 thefts (that also covered crimes committed in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk).

Openreach has a partnership with Crimestoppers that offers rewards of up to £1,000 (sometimes more in extreme cases) for information given anonymously to the charity about cable thefts, 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 also contact Openreach’s security team direct, or if you see a crime in progress, then call the police.

The rollout of full fibre (FTTP) broadband services 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 copper cables will be around for a while yet. Likewise, thieves sometimes mistakenly pull fibre out of the ground, thinking it’s copper.