POLICE today warned people living next door to empty homes to be vigilant after burglars smashed their way through the wall of a vacant house and raided a man's home.

Robert Taylor returned from a break in Blackpool to find a gaping hole in his bathroom and his home in Athol Street North, Burnley, ransacked.

Mr Taylor, 36, said: "I thought to myself, there's something not right here. The first thing I did was take my little girl, Chloe, back to her mum's, then I went to the local pubs to ask if anyone had been selling my things. Then I called the police."

After trying to secure the gaping hole Mr Taylor made a list of what was stolen. The first thing he spotted was that a karaoke machine, bought for his seven year old daughter last Christmas, had gone.

Burnley Police Inspector Dave Croll said his officers supported the council in trying to make all vacant homes secure.

He added: "Any burglary concerns us but this particular one where someone has gone from a vacant premises into an occupied one is very uncommon. Unfortunately in this instance it's happened.

"The issue of vacant properties is a real problem for the town, not only does it detract from the area visually they make it appear a lot worse than it possibly is.

"I know it is a problem that the police and council are looking at and we do what we can to allow them to carry their policy of dealing with it."

The burglars also stole Mr Taylor's vacuum cleaner, video recorder, microwave and emptied his cupboard and fridge of food.

Mr Taylor, who was not insured, added: "I am angry about the break-in and mad about losing my daughter's karaoke machine.

"I have got to pay to have the hole to be fixed and someone could come back and do it again. I am going to move out of this area as soon as possible. It has just gone downhill fast and more and more homes are becoming empty.

"I have never heard of anything like this, only bank robberies. I have done as much as I can to secure my home, but I can't do anything about next door.

"Empty houses should have metal shutters on, there should be no chance of anyone getting into them."

A spokesman for Burnley Council's environmental health department admitted it struggled to cope with the number of empty homes it has to secure.

The spokesman added: "We do have a policy but we need to know which homes are secure. We have a team dedicated to securing empty homes.

"When we receive notification we get someone out within four hours. In this case we have had no notification about the homes being insecure.

"We can't stop someone breaking into a home, it just isn't something we can achieve. Because of the large number of properties it is a big problem for us. We haven't got enough people to be in every street."