Star Comment: Vigilance needed on rural crime
One of the good things about living in a largely rural county is that, relatively speaking, crime is not that bad. Try telling that to the farmers.
In 2014 rural crime cost Shropshire £620,000, according to a nationwide survey by insurers NFU Mutual. Topping the list on the crooks' wish-list have been tools and all-terrain vehicles such as quad bikes and bicycles.
Then you have things like livestock theft and a newcomer to the list of crime targets – solar panels.
Over the border into Wales, rural crime cost the principality £1.7 million in 2014.
The crooks are also moving with the times, with 63 per cent of those surveyed saying that cyber crime is a growing problem for rural communities.
So that is the scale of the problem, and it is a mighty challenge. Out in the country you cannot keep everything under lock and key. Equipment is left out, livestock is left out, and the protection they have is that whoever is going to steal them will need the motivation to travel into the country and be suitably equipped to take the plunder away.
They are easy pickings with logistical complications attached. Urban crooks generally prefer their own little familiar sphere of operations. However, the snag is that there are crooks who are prepared to make the extra effort in areas where the police are thin on the ground and will take an appreciable time to arrive.
This, though, is not a miserable story about rural defeat and retreat in the face of a crime onslaught. It is actually good news because these 2014 figures for the cost of rural crime represent a sharp decrease on those for the previous year in Shropshire and Wales.
This is a victory for the rural communities and for those imaginative schemes which have seen various parties get together to fight back. An example of the sort of things that are being done is the formation of a new police team in the Telford & Wrekin area to tackle business, rural and computer-based crime. The new team, based at Malinslee police station, was launched at a conference in June.
While these figures will bring satisfaction, there is no room for complacency and the vigilance and hard work must continue because the criminals will not have turned over a new leaf. They are still looking for new opportunities.