At its peak, cable theft was estimated to cost the UK economy £770million per annum. While there has been a dramatic reduction in the incidents after a major crack down by the British Transport Police (BTP), which has been aided by £5million of Home Office funding, there were still 2,700-hours of delays and compensation payments of over £12.7million in the 12-months to April 2013.
As a solution, North Yorkshire-based Ellis has designed and developed a tamper proof cleat that its managing director, Richard Shaw, says will stop thieves in their tracks.
“The biggest issue with this crime is the ease and speed with which thieves are able to disconnect and remove long lengths of copper cable,” he said.
The tamper proof cable cleat is designed to make removing copper cables nigh on impossible. Its box design makes the job of detaching the cleat from the cable it is securing laborious and time consuming, while the requirement to fit the cleats at regular intervals along cable lengths means thieves will simply not have the time to remove cables before the police arrive.
“Quite often the best solution to a problem is the simplest and our tamper proof cleat is certainly a simple, but effective deterrent,” said Shaw.
