Doubling arrest rates
The BT Metal Theft Taskforce investigates all incidents involving the theft or damage of cable from within our network, and is taking numerous co-ordinated steps to combat criminal activity within our operational estate.
Comprising of 40 dedicated Openreach staff and four investigators from BT Group Security Investigations, the team helped secure over 450 arrests in 2011/12 – more than double the amount in 2010.
Recovering our cable
We work closely with police forces across the UK, The British Metals Recycling Association, Crimestoppers and SmartWater to actively search for stolen cabling and prosecute offenders.
Openreach strictly controls the recovery and processing of its own waste cable and it is not available on the open market. Disposal of all cable recovered by BT or its contractors is through Openreach’s official channels, and is not offered directly to scrap metal dealers or recyclers.
Local authorities have legal powers to regulate the scrap metal trade in their area under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964. As such, all scrap metal dealers are obliged by law to keep a written record of all scrap metal received, stored or sold on their premises.
Identifying stolen property
Every single one of our cables is marked with a unique BT item code so it can be easily identified when recovered. To help us to reduce theft – and to ensure you feel safe that the metals and cables you're handling aren't stolen – we've put together this downloadable guide.
The guide gives details of some of the many types of cable owned by Openreach, but is by no means exhaustive. If you need help in identifying cables you are handling, please contact our Metal Theft Taskforce via the 24-hour BT Security Helpdesk on 0800 321 999.
You can also follow the accompanying links below to read about some of the recent success stories involving the work of the Metal Theft Task Force.
