Bin night arson attacks escalate in Doncaster village

We have seen bins set alight, generally on Wednesdays and Thursday, and it seems to have escalated in that they are now being pushed against fences, potentially causing the fences to burn too.

They seem to have been happening in Armthorpe around Oakwood Drive, Elmwood Crescent and South Moor Avenue, and seem to be happening around bin night.

We’re looking at CCTV at the moment, and working with the community to try to deter people from putting their bins out early, and to put them away quickly after collections.

We’ve also seen a rise in burglaries in Armthorpe, Edenthorpe and Kirk Sandall. We will have officers patrolling those areas in the coming weeks when they have down time.

And Doncaster East has seen a rise in stolen cars turning up on the streets.

It seems to involve cars that have been stolen from all over Doncaster, often in burglaries. They are then turning up abandoned, particularly around Stainforth and Dunscroft.

They are often still in good condition and will be returned to their owners after we have carried out forensic tests on them.

Another issue where we have seen a rise in reports recently has been off road motorbikes.

This appears to be the case not just in the Doncaster East neighbourhood, but right across Doncaster generally since Christmas.

On the back of this, we’re currently feeding information to our specialist off road bikes team, and there will be an operation to deal with this in the near future.

All this work is going on with the backdrop of working to enforce Covid rules.

We have seen breaches of the regulations, and quite a few fines have been issued.

Most of these have involved people having visitors in their homes. Everyone should know by now that that is currently against the law, to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

We will look at every reported breach.

There were quite a few breaches over Christmas, but fewer than I expected, and we did not have any reports of pubs opening – in the main, people here are sticking to the rules.

In these confusing and worrying times, local journalism is more vital than ever. Thanks to everyone who helps us ask the questions that matter by taking out a subscription or buying a paper. We stand together. Nancy Fielder, editor.