Rural Crime News

More than 950 wheels of cheddar, worth £300,000, have been stolen from a London-based artisanal cheese maker. 

The owners of a Carmarthen farm have been prosecuted for animal welfare law violations and banned from keeping animals. 

Hampshire and Isle of Wight police and crime commissioner Donna Jones has reiterated her promise to clamp down on organised crime gangs operating across rural communities in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. 

Two dogs, Gyp and Jess, will be rehomed after their owners were sentenced for hare coursing offences. 

An Annan farm partnership has been fined £600 for failing to properly maintain slurry storage, Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) reported. 

A Duns farmer has been fined £600 after he failed to protect the water environment by cattle poaching, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) confirmed. 

Rural crime officers are investigating the theft of a tractor and hedge trimmer from a farm in Dorchester. 

The owners of a Norfolk-based pumpkin patch have issued a plea to local residents following a theft of a tractor, 27 wheelbarrows and a mower. 

Officers from Cumbria’s dedicated rural crime team have recovered stolen property worth £820,000, cut quad bike thefts and made dozens of arrests in one year since the squad was launched.

Scottish Borders police are appealing for information after 70 hay bales were set alight at a farm in Berwickshire. 

An 85-year-old Welsh farmer has been handed a suspended sentence following charges relating to causing unnecessary suffering to sheep and cattle, with some “being eaten live by flies”. 

A Suffolk rare breeds farm has experienced an “absolute horror” after one of its sheep was shot.