53 minutes ago
By Malcolm Prior, @NewsMPrior, BBC News, rural affairs correspondent
Farmers and landowners say they are “at war” with countryside crime gangs and need more help from specialist rural police officers.
One farmer told the BBC he faced “constant warfare” against balaclava-clad thieves breaking into his farmyard and also against gangs of illegal hare-coursers.
A new report by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) warns that police forces in England and Wales that cover large rural areas are “in crisis” and need more funding to fight back against the organised gangs.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council said forces were “strengthening their response” to rural crime.
The CLA’s findings come after a Durham University report earlier this year .found there were 22 serious organised criminal gangs active in the countryside
Simon Porter, 65, who farms 570 hectares (1,408 acres) near the village of Crondall in Hampshire, has had to install £10,000 worth of farm defences, including three-tonne concrete blocks at entrances to his field, to keep the gangs out.
He has been targeted by thieves and violent gangs of harecoursers breaking onto his land for illegal racing and gambling.
Mr Porter told the BBC: “If we didn’t have all our defences, the countryside would simply become even more lawless and it would be an unsafe place in which to live because these people are hugely threatening.
“It is a war. I’m not trying to be dramatic. It literally is like that.”
‘Constant anxiety’
Mr Porter, who also runs a vineyard, said the gangs of thieves were targeting farms for quad bikes and expensive tools,
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