TWO Bradford burglars have been jailed for stealing a £6,000 quad bike in a night-time raid on a remote farm.

Michael Ingham and Ryan Holmes stashed the bike in a garage in Bradford after raiding it from an outbuilding in the Hebden Bridge area of Calderdale.

The raid was carried out while the elderly farmer was asleep.

Ingham, 27, a third strike housebreaker, was imprisoned for a total of three and a half years and Holmes, 23, was jailed for 12 months.

Both men admitted burgling the farm building on October 23 last year and Ingham pleaded guilty to burgling a house in Barnoldswick, a town in Lancashire, just outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park, on September 11, 2017.

Ingham, of Dixon Avenue, Great Horton, Bradford, had 19 convictions for 31 offences, the court heard.

Those offences included house burglaries in 2009 and 2014, Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday.

Holmes, of Clervaux Court, Clayton, Bradford, had 14 convictions for 27 offences.

Prosecutor Fiona Clancy said the pair targeted the farm where the elderly occupier had lived for 63 years.

They managed to drive from Bradford to Hebden Bridge, steal the bike and return to the city and hide it in just two hours.

Ingham and Holmes were identified from CCTV footage at the farm and the stolen quad bike was discovered hidden under old beds in a garage in Cemetery Road, in the Lidget Green area of Bradford.

Ingham and two other unidentified males burgled a computer, a camera, a wallet and watches from the house in Barnoldswick while the owner was at work.

They forced open the back door and then stole a £12,000 Volkswagen Golf as part of their £13,380 haul, Miss Clancy said.

Ingham left muddy footmarks on the carpets that matched his training shoes, the court was told.

Ian Hudson, barrister for Ingham, said that he obtained work on his release from prison in 2016 but returned to crime after losing the job.

No one was disturbed during either burglary. The farmer was not woken and the house owner was out at work.

Safter Salam, for Holmes, urged Judge Colin Burn to allow him to rehabilitate in the community. He had earned a positive report while on remand in Leeds Prison and he was anxious to build on the good work to make a new start.

“He wishes to turn his life around and be more industrious,” Mr Salam said.

But Judge Burn said the farm building break-in was too serious to be dealt with by anything but an immediate custodial sentence.

The defendants had targeted a remote farm at night, although the farmer was spared the terror of waking to find people on his property.