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BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON
HISTORIC CHURCHES
21ST ANNUAL EDITION
ALARMS FOR
CHURCH ROOFS
Angus Brown
A
LTHOUGH LEAD
theft is not such a
regular news item as it was in 2013, the
threat to historic buildings from this
crime has not gone away. Lead theft is directly
linked to its scrap value which has soared
during the last six years from less than £400
per tonne to a peak of more than £1,200. With
a current price of £950 per tonne, churches are
still being targeted for the lead and copper on
their roofs. For example, between 2000 and
2004 there were just 20 thefts of metal a year
from churches across the country, however
between 2007 and 2011 these increased to
more than 14,000 reported cases, at a cost of
more than £32 million. Churches are perceived
as fairly easy targets, particularly in isolated
settings, and specialist insurer Ecclesiastical
(EIG plc) reports that it is still receiving
more than ten metal theft claims per week.
The true cost of stripping lead from a
church roof is, of course, not simply the cost
of the replacement material: there is often
a very wide discrepancy between the small
quantity of metal stolen and the damage
recklessly caused in the execution of the theft.
Metal thieves who target historic churches
cause damage which goes far beyond the
value of the metal that is stolen. In some
cases, the damage caused by rainwater ingress
extends to medieval wall paintings and other
irreplaceable pieces of art and historic fabric.
There is clearly a graduating scale of metal
thieves which ranges from the ‘chancer’, the
opportunistic and small-scale offender who is
after quick cash, to the highly organised and
specialist criminal who will strip entire roofs.
In general, however, research has shown that
the sophistication of thieves targeting metal
roofs tends towards the lower end of the scale.
There has also been concern regarding
scrap metal dealers, with their ‘no-questions-
asked’ approach and an industry-wide refusal
to ban cash-based transactions. Only when
the government introduced a new law in
England and Wales regarding these issues were
dealers south of the border forced to adapt.
DETERRENCE
Since lead thieves who are interrupted can
still cause expensive damage, the use of 24-
hour monitored alarms with audio or CCTV
verification is increasingly considered to be
ineffective in protecting the historic fabric of
an ancient church. The potential thieves need
to be deterred before they do any damage.
Deterrence starts at the perimeter, with
notices advising would-be burglars of the
measures that have been taken to prevent
theft. These may include the use of physical
deterrence systems such as alarms, anti-climb
paint, ‘DNA’ marking systems which enable
stolen material to be identified, and lead
Stoke Minster, Stoke-on-Trent: when caught, the perpetrators were found to have been paid £480 for the lead they had taken from the roof, but the damage they had caused
cost more than £33,000 to repair.
Damaged plasterwork at All Saints, Newton Heath,
Manchester following the theft of its lead
