UK: Network Rail losing millions from copper thefts

[John Ashworth]

Network Rail losing millions from 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

* Tom Bawden
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 June 2011 18.02 BST

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 jumped even higher in the past three weeks, prompting the company to introduce a new night shift for beleaguered staff.

Steve White, the Network Rail engineer in charge of signalling and telecommunications in the Sheffield area, said: "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."

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 called up to 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," said White. "Copper is likely to keep rising and the austerity measures aren't helping."

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 affected, right down to the human resources department, which has to deal with increased levels of stress," White said.

The damage is also taking a financial toll, costing Network Rail £43m in compensation and repair charges in the past three years, as thousands of incidents led to nearly 1m 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. Copper has tripled to about $9,000 (£5,486) a tonne in under three years as fast-growing emerging markets such as China demand more of the metal, which is used in wiring, to feed 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 quick profit.

The number of copper thefts is closely aligned to the price of the metal, 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.

In Copper Theft Central, even a metre of signalling cable is worth stealing

Sheffield's rail maintenance teams are working overtime to replace copper wiring stolen for its scrap value

* Tom Bawden
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 June 2011 19.47 BST

It was the middle of the night and John Smith was mending the damage from the weekend's latest copper cable theft in Sheffield – when a man fell out of the tree behind him.

Smith, a member of Network Rail's local fault and maintenance team, had arrived at the scene before the thief could escape, forcing the perpetrator to shin up the nearest tree.

"I can laugh about it now but at the time it was pretty scary. I was stood there, waiting in the pitch black, and the cable thief fell out of the trees," said Smith, who, like his colleagues, has seen his overtime increase significantly lately as the crime wave pushes the maintenance teams to the brink.

"Another time, I went looking for stolen cable from the train lines, through a wooded area to where the grass had been flattened down. There it was, coiled up with an axe next to it, and I could hear them in the trees," he said.

Again, the thieves ran off. But Smith's colleagues of Smith haven't always been so fortunate. "Andy was shot … John was shot in the back with an air rifle ... [Another colleague] was threatened to be stabbed when he caught up with them," he said.

Dread

Both Smith and Chris Blythen, the man working with him on a stretch of railway track near Woodburn junction, not far from the city centre, have noticed a significant increase in their workload in the past two or three weeks.

They said it was putting a huge strain on them and their colleagues. "It gets to the point where you're dreading the next phone call," said Blythen, who did four 12-hour shifts in six days last week, although he was only rostered for eight-hour ones.

"I've got no life," he said. "I get home around 9.30 and I'm back at work early the next morning. They're asking us to stay behind, there is that much happening. It's really hard work.

"In the last three weeks, we've been getting dragged away from other jobs a lot to cover these faults.

"It used to be once every now and again, but recently there is just so much happening and there is not enough manpower," he added.

Smith and Blythen are based at the centre of a rapidly growing industry that has seen Sheffield, once the world's steel capital, transformed into Copper Theft Central. Thieves here are ripping out lines attached to track signals, which use copper to convey power and messages from the control centre.

The scores of scrap metal merchants set up to deal in locally manufactured steel now offer ready buyers for stolen copper cables, while growing poverty fuelled by spending cuts and a slew of secluded yet easily accessible railway lines have made this part of northern England particularly susceptible.

"There's one area around Tinsley East junction [just outside Sheffield] where the number of thefts is in double figures. It was done twice last week," said Blythen.

"In one case it looked like it had caused some kind of explosion so the police were phoning up local hospitals asking if they had seen anyone with burns.

"At Tapton, near Chesterfield station, cable was taken from the same place three days in a row, until they caught him, and it was only about a metre long.

"And it's going to continue. If they catch someone, there's another 50 people waiting to do it instead," added Blythen, who says it is extremely difficult to stop theft because there are so few staff to monitor so much track.

Speculation

Network Rail and Britain's train passengers are casualties of two major events – the economic downturn and the resulting spending cuts that have made would-be thieves more likely to steal, and the commodity boom, which has seen speculators piling into metals and other raw materials in the hope of turning a profit.

With demand from fast-growing economies such as China and India likely to continue for some time, investors are increasingly seeking to profit from the rising price of copper and other commodities.

The amount of money invested globally in commodity funds hit a record $415bn (£254bn) in April – more than 40 times more than it was just a decade ago – in a development that critics say is artificially inflating the cost of basic foods such as wheat and soya beans as well as industrial raw materials such as metals.

Some leading industry consultants believe that financial speculation in copper markets is now so widespread that the price copper is currently trading at – about $9,000 a tonne and forecast by some to hit as much as $13,000 by the end of the year – is more than twice its true value of between $4,000 and $5,000 a tonne. This is making it more attractive for thieves, while threatening economic growth by making raw materials more expensive.