A CLAMPDOWN on rogue scrap metal dealers has been launched by police.

Six people have already been arrested and seven thefts have been unearthed by officers in Burnley.

Heavy demand from countries like China - where the economy is booming - has sent prices of metal like lead and copper soaring over the last two years and fuelled demand.

And thieves are taking advantage of the market to cash in by stealing metal, especially from churches and homes which are empty or under renovation, to sell to scrap dealers.

Since 2005, thefts of lead have trebled and copper thefts have multiplied 10 times, police said, with recycling firms paying about £900 a tonne for lead and £2,700 a tonne for copper.

Officers in Burnley have now launched SMART (Scrap Merchants Aiming to Reduce Theft) in a bid to put a stop to the illegal trade.

They have teamed up with registered dealers in the town to warn them of known offenders who may try to sell scrap.

Sgt Craig Leach, who came up with the idea, said it was aready starting to produce results with six arrests and several thefts detected.

He said: "The thinking behind the scheme is that we work with scrap dealers and identify people who have previous convictions for this type of crime and we aim to frustrate them. Just the other day we had somebody try to sell a quantity of copper piping to a dealer who ended up being turned away and leaving his haul behind because he couldn't sell it. Hopefully that will start to put people off trying to make money by stealing metal and trying to sell it on."

Councils across the country have reported a spate of thefts of grid and manhole covers to feed the need for scrap.

The highest-profile theft believed to be linked to scrap metal was that of a two-tonne Henry Moore sculpture stolen from Hertfordshire in December 2005.