VOLUNTEERS at a community centre garden have urged vandals to stay away from their site after repeated attacks.

Rockwell Community Centre runs a number of projects from its Thorpe Edge base, but has recently been hit by vandalism.

Staff turned up for work earlier this month to find a chicken had been stolen from its coop in the garden after someone cut through wires.

A post on the centre’s Facebook page was brimming with anger.

It read: “Another weekend over and yet more damage to the Rockwell Community Centre garden.

“These people are absolutely despicable!!!

“Anger does not anywhere near accurately describe how the garden staff and volunteers are feeling at the minute! This needs to stop.

“Someone out there knows who did this...do the right thing and let us know who!”

This is not the first time the coop has been vandalised, while plants in the garden have also been stolen and last year, a section of the allotment was badly damaged.

Greg Lucas, who runs the Roots and Fruits community gardening project, said volunteers now turn up on a Monday morning wondering what crimes will have been committed over the weekend.

He said: “We are constantly having to repair damage in the garden or replace plants.

“We cannot keep tabs on it now.

“It’s a regular occurrence and is blatant vandalism.

“This one was the worst thing they’ve done – they came in and chopped the wire and removed a chicken.”

Kind-hearted builders stepped in to help repair the allotment a year ago, but Mr Lucas says volunteers often take it upon themselves to fix any vandalism.

However, this cannot continue and Mr Lucas has appealed to those responsible to stop inflicting the damage because he does not want to involve the police.

He added: “We repair everything straight away instead of leaving it to look a mess.

“We’ve reinforced it to make sure it’s safe for the chickens.

“I’m assuming this is children and I would like them to have a bit of respect for the volunteers and hard workers who have made this into a community facility.

“It’s not just there for us, but other members of the public as well.

“The number of incidents slowed down after last year, but we are getting to the point now where it’s becoming more frequent and we come in on Monday to find out what’s happened.”