Avon and Somerset Police made 15 pre-planned arrests and executed search warrants at five scrap metal dealers in the south west area on Tuesday (23 July), as part of Operation Tornado.

The arrests follow a five-month investigation and a series of covert compliance testing at yards suspected of buying metal purported to be stolen, and thought to be illegally offering cash payments to customers (outlawed under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act last year).

More than 60 officers were involved in the arrests, in partnership with agencies and organisations including BT, Network Rail, National Grid, Western Power, Environment Agency, HMRC and local authorities.

Six women and nine men were arrested, predominantly on suspicion of handling stolen goods. The police have said that further suspected offences are also being investigated including potential financial offences and suspected breaches of the recent cashless trading legislation. Two more men will reportedly be arrested ‘at a later stage’.

‘Natural’ to suspect ‘hostile dealers’

Various items of metal and cabling, suspected to be stolen, were seized during Tuesday’s warrants along with computers and financial documents to aid the on-going investigation.

Sergeant Edward Hawkins, one of two regional metal theft coordinators in the South West, explained: "We have been visiting all our yards, with our partners, to deliver education about the recent changes in law, recording of sales and how to identify stolen metal.

"We have given hand-outs from BT and Western Power for example, to help with cable identification. We have also been asking yards not to take items on face value, to ask questions as to where it came from, not to accept stolen property and to report it to police.

"In most places we have been welcomed and the majority of scrap metal yards are fully compliant, but there have been several places where they have been hostile. In these cases I think it is then fairly natural for us to wonder why."

Detective Superintendent Mark Saunders added: "During our work over the past year, we have found the majority of scrap metal dealers are entirely legitimate businesses operating within the law. However, there is a minority who we believe to be operating criminally.

“We have successfully dealt with a lot of the more opportunistic thieves and are now looking at the serious and organised crime element and those who handle the stolen metal.”

The introduction of the new Scrap Metal Dealers Act in October will allow the force “to ensure that any dealers who are not compliant with legislation either criminally, environmentally or who are in breach of local authority conditions, have their licences revoked”.

Operation Tornado history

Previous to this week’s arrests, police forces from Gloucestershire, Avon and Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall made 14 arrests and seized documents as part of Operation Tornado in March.

In addition, scrap yards across the region also received visits to ensure compliance with Operation Tornado, which stipulates that anyone selling scrap metal to a dealer must provide identification at the point of sale. This saw ‘thousands of documents and records’ checked with some seized by police watchdog Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for further investigation.

Avon and Somerset Police claimed that these measures have led to the number of recorded metal thefts dropping 50 per cent across the south west in the past twelve months, with the figure being as high as 62 per cent in this force area. Despite this, Saunders was keen to add that the force is “not complacent” as a result.

Read more about the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill.