Travellers in frame after ransack raid

WAY in . . . Framos worker Paul Hughes where thieves broke in

TRAVELLERS have been accused of using a sledgehammer to smash their way into a metal works before making off with power tools, steel and a company van worth £15,000.

Jim Moss, managing director at Framos Fabrications in Brookdale Street, Failsworth, was alerted by his alarm company on Wednesday morning - and found the works had a hole in a rear wall that was big enough to climb through.

When it was found nothing had been taken, Jim blocked the hole with steel sheeting and drove a forklift truck up to the wall to keep it in place.

But when workmen opened up at 7am yesterday, they saw another hole — and that the offices had been ransacked and steel sheeting, power tools and welding equipment loaded into a company van and driven away through the site’s steel gates.

A group of travellers had set up camp on the old Dairy Crest site next door to Framos on Wednesday morning and had been served with a 24-hour eviction notice. The rear of Framos’s premises had been reached through Dairy Crest’s gate.

Jim said: “They deactivated the alarm the first time they broke in so when it happened a second time the alarm didn’t go off.

“They have just taken everything they could get their hands on, loaded it into one of our vans and shot off.

“Both times they got in through the old Dairy Crest site next door, which is derelict. Something needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The travellers were gone by yesterday morning.