Police busy marking paving after thefts from Churches in Ormskirk and Southport areas

Our neighbourhood team has been taking preventative measures to stop the increase in thefts of Yorkstone paving in churchyards across the  Ormskirk area.

There have been three incidents of thefts of Yorkstone across West Lancashire over the last couple of months. However, thefts of this nature have happened regularly across the rest of the country.

As a response to this, we've been looking at a number of ways to prevent this from happening, one of which is, we have sourced protective marking equipment to make the stones more difficult to sell on.

Yorkstone paving is of high value and is in demand due to it being aesthetic and is commonly used for drives and paths, particularly in church grounds.

Heritage assets are sites which are considered to have a high value to the heritage of England and include; listed buildings, conservation areas, scheduled monuments and registered parks and gardens as well as undesignated but acknowledged heritage building and sites.

If you see any suspicious activity particularly around religious establishments,  please call 999 if there is a crime in progress.