Network Rail is paying out millions due to copper thefts

Copper theft from railway lines is so rife the rail operator has had to take on new staff, as well as pay compensation for delays The theft of copper cables from Britain’s railways is reaching epidemic proportions, costing the operator Network Rail millions of pounds as it takes on extra staff to catch the criminals and pays out compensation to train companies for delays on the system. Copper theft from railway lines jumped by 67% to 3,116 incidents in the year to April as metal prices have soared and Britain’s stumbling recovery from recession has continued to push impoverished groups into crime, according to the British Transport Police. But Network Rail maintenance staff working in the worst-hit areas – which are centred around the former steel city of Sheffield – say the number of incidents has spiked even higher in the past three weeks, prompting the company to introduce a new night shift for beleaguered staff. “In the past few weeks it has definitely got worse. Around here, it went from being a minor occurrence to around two or three incidents a week in 2009 and now it’s got to 10 or 12 incidents a week,” said Steve White, the Network Rail engineer in charge of signalling and telecommunications in the Sheffield area. His Blast Lane Depot, situated in the city’s former industrial heartland, introduced a new 10pm to 6am shift three weeks ago because cable theft had become so rife that staff were being contacted as many as seven or eight times a night, White said. Most Network Rail depots around the country have introduced some form of “24/7″ cover. “It’s pretty soul destroying because fixing theft damage is becoming my new day job, so we have much less time to deal with routine faults. And it can only get worse. If someone is desperate and determined they will find a way – copper is likely to keep rising and the austerity measures aren’t helping,” said White. Most of the thefts are carried out by casual criminals, stealing small amounts of copper and selling it on to scrap metal dealers to fund drug or alcohol habits, according to the British Transport Police. “The knock-on effect of these thefts across the network is huge. Everybody is effected, right down to the human resources department which has to deal with increased levels of stress,” White said. The damage is also taking its financial toll, costing Network Rail about £43m in compensation and repair charges in the past three years, as thousands of incidents forced nearly 1 million minutes of delays. One incident on 15 April, near the Nottinghamshire town of Newark, cost Network Rail £620,758 in compensation payments to train and freight operators, after a cut to a line-side cable forced 34 cancellations and 8,074 minutes of delays. Economic hardship has been blamed for the rise in thefts but the soaring price of copper has made it more lucrative to steal. Copper has tripled to about $9,000 (£5,486) a tonne in under three years as fast-growing emerging markets such as China demand increasing quantities of the metal, which is used in wiring, to service its construction boom. The price is also being driven up by financial speculators who have poured tens of billions of dollars into metals as an investment, in the hope of making a profit. The number of copper thefts is closely aligned to its price, meaning that an increase in speculation by pension funds and other investors at one end is likely to filter through to an increase in train service disruptions at the other. Network Rail Commodities Transport Crime Travel & leisure Tom Bawden guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 6, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.