Workshop owned by Northamptonshire's police, fire and crime commissioner raided three times in just over a month

Burglars broke into the empty £3.3million garage workshop bought by Northamptonshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner three times in just over a month.

Stephen Mold’s office bought the unit in Earls Barton in February 2021 but it has only been used for scoping works.

Thieves burgled the workshop on April 24, May 22 and on May 26.

Mr Mold said last week that it had been raided for ‘a lot of its pipes [and] its toilets’.

A spokesman for his office said it has ‘put measures in place to prevent any further crimes’.

It said the cost of damage and securing the site in Baron Avenue was about £16,100.

But it said £8,000 of that was the cost of fencing, which would have been needed anyway.

Travellers trespassed onto the site and parked on it on February 7 and 8, 2022.

Last week, Mr Mold conceded the unit’s sale is likely to result in a ‘small loss’ for the taxpayer.

It is currently on the market for offers in the region of £3.5m.

Mr Mold told Northamptonshire’s police and crime panel that it would have been unviable to continue with a plan to refit it and use it as a garage for the county’s police and fire services.

In scrapping the project he said he saved about £8m.

His office said last year that costs had spiralled from a planned £6m to an unaffordable £16m.

He announced last week that his office will now buy a second site and build its own workshop but was tightlipped about where it will be following the burglaries.

He said at the time: “As a consequence of bringing it up last time, to say that it was up for sale and empty, the local paper produced an article on it and subsequently it was burgled for a lot of its pipes, its toilets.

“I’m going to have to be careful going forward about what information we say here that puts our buildings at risk.”

A spokesman for Mr Mold’s office said: “Any incidents of theft and damage at our property are regrettable, and, as any property owner would, we review the security of our buildings and put measures in place to prevent any further crimes.”

A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said no-one has been arrested in connection with the three burglaries.

Anyone with information about them can call the force on 101 and quote incident numbers 23000249405 (April 24), 23000310451 (May 22) or 23000322092 (May 26).