Farmers at “war” with rural criminal gangs

Farmers and landowners say they are “at war” with rural criminal gangs and need more help from specialist rural police.

One farmer told the BBC he was in a “constant battle” with balaclava-clad thieves breaking into his farm and also with gangs of illegal rabbit lifters.

A new report by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) warns that police forces in England and Wales, which cover large rural areas, are “in crisis” and need more resources to tackle organised gangs.

The National Council of Police Chiefs said police forces would step up their “response measures” to rural crime.

Simon Porter, 65, farms 570 hectares (1,408 acres) of land near the village of Crondall in Hampshire. To keep the gangs out, he had to build £10,000 worth of protective fencing around his field, including three-tonne concrete blocks at the entrances to his field.

He became a target for thieves and violent gangs of sons of bitches who broke into his land to illegally hold races and gamble.

Mr Porter told the BBC: “If we didn’t have all our defences in place, the countryside would become even more lawless and unsafe because these people pose a huge threat.”

“It’s a war. I don’t want to dramatize it. It’s literally like that.”

Mr Porter, who also runs a vineyard, said the gangs of thieves were targeting farms to steal quad bikes and expensive tools, and would often break open the shutters of storage sheds to break in.

Local farmers, like many others across the country, now use mobile phone chat groups to warn each other about suspicious activity – day or night.

“We have to keep our phones on 24 hours a day, so we are constantly in fear and terror,” Mr Porter said.

“You get called out at night and have to get up, go out into the darkness and walk around. It can be quite intimidating when you see a vehicle coming by at night.

“For us and our families, it’s as if we’re constantly living on the edge.”

Mr Porter said his local patrol officers were “trying their best but have very limited resources”.

Inspector Cath MacDonald of Hampshire Police told the BBC that officers “take crime in rural areas very seriously as the impact on the livelihoods of those affected can be devastating”.

The police are one of 36 forces responsible for solving crime in rural areas of England and Wales and have received Freedom of Information requests from the CLA seeking an overview of the police’s resources for their fight against rural crime.

Hampshire has its own rural crime team with specialist equipment – ​​notably high-powered torches, surveillance drones, off-road vehicles, thermal imaging cameras, microchip readers and mobile ANPR cameras.

However, the CLA found that five of the 20 police departments that provided information did not have a dedicated rural crime unit and that no department had more than 0.7 percent of officers working exclusively against rural criminals.

Durham Constabulary, which is responsible for policing predominantly in rural areas, is one of the police forces that does not have its own task force to combat rural crime.

A force spokesman said it would instead rely on information provided by locals under a new plan overseen by its own intelligence officer.

He said rural communities are “our eyes and ears and have proven time and again that their support makes a difference and helps us reduce rural crime across our county.”

The FOI responses also revealed that Leicestershire Police has allocated just eight of its 2,252 officers to its rural crime team.

But Sergeant Rob Cross of Leicestershire Police’s rural crime team told the BBC that it was “one of the most active rural crime teams in the country”.

Sergeant Cross said there had been a decrease in agricultural and wildlife crime in the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year, and more than £1.5 million worth of stolen agricultural equipment had been recovered.

Victoria Vyvyan, chair of the CLA, said that “the rural policing system is in crisis” and that some farmers feel they have to “fight a constant and costly battle to keep criminal gangs at bay”.

“More and more rural people are realising that they cannot always rely on the police to keep their communities and property safe,” she added.

A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said all police chiefs were working to ensure that police were “as visible and accessible as possible” in rural communities.

He said: “The police are stepping up their action against rural crime, setting their targets in line with a national rural affairs strategy.”

The National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) – an organisation of police and crime commissioners and organisations representing rural communities – has called on the incoming government to fund new specialist rural crime coordinators, provide training for all officers and control room staff in the area and make greater use of new technology.

A spokesman said: “If we are serious about breaking up these gangs, we need to do more to tackle rural crime.”

The Conservatives said they had set up the first specialist rural crime unit within the National Crime Agency in 2023 and would continue to take action to protect rural communities.

Labour has announced it will introduce a new cross-government strategy to tackle rural crime and increase police patrols in rural areas.

The Liberal Democrats want to abolish police and crime commissioner posts and use the money saved to ensure that every police force has an appropriately equipped team to combat crime in rural areas.

Plaid Cymru has pledged to set up a specialist rural crime unit for the whole of Wales, with officers to be recruited from the farming community.