Thieves move in on garden veg

Allotments across the Black Country and Staffordshire are being targeted by vegetable thieves as people struggle to cope with rising food bills and keep their families fed.

Rhubarb, potatoes and onions were part of a haul stolen from an allotment in Cheslyn Hay, near Cannock, while other sites in the region have also reported thefts of produce.

Allan Rees, chairman of the National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardening, is concerned the problem could get worse as the economic outlook gets ever gloomier.

"Families are getting poorer and this is one way of putting food on the table," he said. "I believe they are being sold on. Thieves stole potatoes from my own plot and put the stalks back in place so it was two or three days before I noticed."

Anti-vandal paint and police patrols are among measures now in place after a series of thefts from Cheslyn Hay Allotments. Police have been given their own key to go on to the site between Wolverhampton Road and Pinfold Lane.

Lynda Foster, of the Cheslyn Hay Allotments and Cottage Gardeners Association, which manages the site, said: "It's heart-breaking."

Kelvin Brittain, a 52-year-old security officer who has a plot at Sandy Lane Allotments in Bushbury, Wolverhampton, said two wheelbarrow loads of rhubarb and beetroot had recently been plundered from a neighbouring plot.

Security has recently been beefed up at a West Bromwich allotments after a £6,000 project launched in the wake of a spate of thefts.

Allotment holders at the Whitehall Road site were suffering from people pinching things from their sheds.

The Greets Green Partnership funded a £6,145 project to flatten ground, remove bushes and put in a 50m fence.

New fences have also been installed at a Walsall allotment in Goscote Lane, Goscote with the help of a £70,000 grant after two men were jailed for stealing metal they ripped from greenhouses at the site.