NEW laws came into force yesterday (Tuesday, October 1) for scrap metal merchants in an effort to drive out rogue dealers.

The Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 marks the first major overhaul of regulations for almost half a century and has been brought in to better equip the authorities to deal with unscrupulous metal traders.

Under the new Act introduced today, cash payments for metal are banned and magistrates can issue fines of up to £5,000 to dealers who continue to trade in cash.

The new rules also include metal dealers having to apply to their local council for a licence which the authority can refuse or revoke if they have evidence that the applicant is unsuitable.

In addition, dealers must now verify, record and retain the name and address of every seller at the point of sale or risk losing their licence.

It is hoped the new laws will reduce metal theft, which costs the UK economy around £220m annually.

John Denham is a third generation owner of J Denham Metals Ltd in Bishop Auckland and although he welcomes the measures if they succeed in cutting down metal theft, he feels the scrap industry is being unfairly tarnished.

He said: “To be truthful, if it (the Act) stops crime and makes it tougher then we are all for it; we don’t want the police coming to our place and we don’t want people stealing stuff, it’s not what we’re about.

“But the police seem to look at us the same as the people who are actually out there stealing the metal so we feel that as an industry we are getting victimised a bit.”

He added: “We turn over millions of pounds a year in metal; we don’t need somebody bad with a boot full of scrap metal worth twenty quid, it doesn’t make any sense that we would risk our business dealing with people like that.”

Listed buildings are often targeted by metal thieves, as are the country’s railways.

Network Rail says in the last year there have been 95 incidents of cable theft costing more than £1m and causing the equivalent of 21 days’ worth of train delays.

British Transport Police launched Operation Tornado last year to combat the problem and North Yorkshire Police said it helped reduce metal thefts in the region from 426 between April 2012 and March 2013, compared to 181 since April this year.

A North Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: “The new legislation is very welcome and provides us with another tool to help crack down on metal theft.

“Although our figures show a big decrease in metal theft since the introduction of Operation Tornado in April 2012, it is still going on and these new regulations can only help contribute to a further reduction.”