Police and Council officers today appealed for help in catching thieves who are stealing iron grates from roads across the Bradford district.

Large numbers of grates which have vanished in the last few weeks are believed to have been sold to the booming scrap metal market.

Grates have been stolen in areas including Shipley, Burley-in-Wharfedale and Menston, creating a danger for pedestrians and road-users and a drain on council finances.

Phil Sawley, the Council's principal highways engineer, said: "There is a great danger now that someone could be seriously injured because of these thefts leaving holes in the road. We are now working with police try to combat this problem.

"We would ask that people who see anything suspicious or notice that any more grates have been taken to contact the police or ourselves immediately."

Grate thefts have been reported in other towns and cities across the country.

Two men were arrested in Gloucester in connection with the theft of 40 grates which left the Council facing a £28,000 bill for repairs and replacements.

The huge expansion of the Chinese steel industry is believed to be the main cause for the rocketing prices in the worldwide metals market. It has led the Chinese government to order tighter supervision of scrap metal imports to try to stop the burgeoning black market.

Today, chairman of Bradford Council's environment scrutiny committee Councillor Ghazanfer Khaliq (Lab, Bradford Moor) said he was receiving more reports than ever before about grate thefts. "It is now becoming so widespread that you simply have to think that there might be a black market where it is being sold at high prices," he said.

"I think the whole thing could be professionally organised."

The scrap metal boom has also led to unusual thefts in other countries.

Earlier this month thieves stole a locomotive from a Ukrainian museum after producing forged documents which claimed they had authority to move it.

Days earlier an 11-metre long bridge spanning a river in the Ukraine was stolen, isolating an entire town.