Hot metal

But metal theft is no laughing matter anymore. Ask the owners of the magnificent antique bronze peacock that was stolen from the garden of a house near Wimborne last week. It's worth £30,000. As an antique.

However, Dorset police feel it could have been taken for scrap, just like the £3 million Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Reclining Figure, which was carted off on the back of a lorry during an audacious theft in Hertfordshire in 2005 and has never been seen again. Its scrap value was estimated at a mere £5,000.

Precious statues grab the headlines but the metal thieves aren't fussy. Earlier this year, British Transport Police complained of "an explosion" in metal thefts and said that after terrorism, this was the biggest problem they faced.

Deputy Chief Constable Paul Crowther said: "We've seen an explosion in the number of crimes that have taken place. It ranges from the opportunist theft of a few hundred metres of cable to serious, large-scale criminality.

"There is only one outlet for this metal to go and we are working with scrap metal dealers and warning them not to accept this stolen property."

British Transport Police have seen the theft of everything from power lines to rail signalling copper, putting passenger and driver safety at risk, and have now formed a national squad to deal with this emerging crime.

But the problem isn't just in Britain, it's international, fuelled by the demand for diminishing raw materials by the tiger economies in India and China.

In the UK, the world's fifth largest exporter of scrap metal, theft has increased by 170 per cent in Cambridgeshire in the last year, by 120 per cent in West Mercia, by 112 per cent in the West Midlands and is up 100 per cent in Warwickshire and Sussex.

Bus shelters have been stolen in the north, 14 manhole and drain covers removed in east London, leaving dangerous holes in the road, copper taken from a hospice in Shropshire and road signs have been disappearing in Warwickshire. Eleven large metal signs valued at £5,000 disappeared from the A46 and metal signs were stolen from nine locations on the A46 between Alcester and Stratford.

In the West Midlands magistrates only realised the lead had been stolen from their courthouse when water started pouring through during a hearing and in Wednesbury, last month, homeowners in one street arrived back from work to discover their doorknobs and brass numbers were missing.

Churches are once more falling victim to the lead thieves. The problem is now so bad that specialist insurer Ecclesiastical has been forced to issue warnings to clients after receiving 1,800 claims for stolen lead so far this year.

Lead to the value of £30,000 has been stolen this year from St Mary's Church in Lychett Matravers, which saw seven separate thefts between August 5 and 25.

Vicar the Rev Patrick Hastings says: "It really is dispiriting because we have to raise the money to replace this lead and it is very expensive. We are hoping to replace the lead with something that looks the same but which doesn't cost so much and that won't be attractive to the thieves, but we have to gain permission from several bodies to be able to do that."

But help may be at hand for churches that haven't lost their lead roofing. From this week Ecclesiastical is recommending its clients apply SmartWater - a DNA-style profile to their lead roofing so that if it is stolen it can be easily traced and checked at scrap-yards. So far the use of SmartWater has resulted in more than 400 convictions.

The move backs up advice from the British Metal Recycling Association which urges members to check all metals which are bought to them for sale.

A spokesman for Nelson Stanley recycling in Poole says the company's policy has always been to buy from dealers and individuals who are known to them.

"If people we don't know come here and we're concerned about aspects of the metal they are bringing, we ask to see their identity, such as a driving licence, and we also take the details of their vehicle," he said.