Burglars posing as electricity utility workers have been preying on elderly people in south Shropshire, police said.Constable Will Quan, of Ludlow CID, said a man had called at a pensioner’s home in Shrewsbury Road, Craven Arms, at about 9.10am on Thursday.

He said: “He claimed to have cut through an electric cable at the community centre where work is being carried out and asked the man if he could come in and check the television for static. The householder then became suspicious and the man left.”

The man was white, in his mid 20s, about 5ft 8ins, slim, with short hair. He was wearing a khaki green baseball cap.

Thirty minutes later, a man knocked on a door of a house in Lacy Road, Ludlow, and started talking to the pensioner about problems with gas and electricity. The woman asked for his badge, he said he had forgotten it so she told him to leave.

Then, at about 1pm, a woman in a property in Victoria Road, Kington, near Leominster, found a man in her dining room stating he was from the MEB. He made her test electrical items and police believe that while she was distracted, an accomplice entered the property and stole cash.

The men, who police say were the same people, also stole jewellery and cash from an address in Bromyard, Herefordshire.

Anyone with information should call police 0300 333 3000.