The Crime Prevention Website

Back on July 30th we carried a story about some forthcoming legislation to help in the fight against metal theft.   The Scrap Metal Dealers Bill’s key features included:

  • the ability for local authorities to refuse and revoke a [Scrap Metal]licence
  • giving courts the power to close unlicensed dealers
  • requiring dealers to verify the identity of sellers
  • banning cash transactions for the whole industry without exemption
  • creating a single publically available national register of licence holders maintained by the Environment Agency

Well, I wasn’t expecting any movement on this until at least the Spring next year, so I was very pleased to see the cash payment ban come ahead of the Bill receiving Royal Assent, due to further amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (which I mentioned yesterday in respect to knife crime)

So, it’s all happening at the Home Office at the moment and I’m sure this news will be very welcomed by the legitimate industry and the many victims of metal theft, especially the railway operators and their customers who have suffered such huge inconvenience over the past ten years.

Of course, it’ll take a lot more than a ban on cash payments to sort out the problem, but this is a good start.  Let’s hope the rest of the measures in the Bill will be enacted as soon as possible.

You know it makes sense!  

Previous article on this story at this link  http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/b/139/crime-prevention-news/2012/jul/30/the-scrap-metal-dealers-bill/

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