Stolen copper cable valued at £20,000 has been seized from scrap dealers during a crackdown on metal thieves in Bradford and Leeds.

The two-day purge codenamed Operation Agnew saw police teams and staff at Network Rail, YEDL, BTP, and the Environment Agency visit scrap dealers across south Bradford and west Leeds.

At two sites the teams identified cable valued at about £20,000 which was found to belong to Network Rail, YEDL and British Telecom.

The cable was recovered while investigations continue.

Meanwhile, neighbourhood policing officers in Bradford South and North West Leeds set up a vehicle checkpoint on the A647 Leeds/Bradford Road at Thornbury to target suspicious and potentially unsafe vehicles using the route between the two cities.

At the same time officers in the force’s Road Crime Team, equipped with Automatic Number Plate Recognition equipment, stopped vehicles in the area and guided them to the check site at the Gallagher Leisure Park in Dick Lane.

The campaign is calling for communities to take a stand against cable theft which causes delays to thousands of rail passengers every week.

Cable theft on the railway has cost more than £43 million in three years and has resulted in 16,000 hours of delay – 666 days of rail travel.

  • Read more in Friday’s T&A