£70,000 worth of damage to steal a tenner!

Bewildered staff discovered the trail of destruction at an engineering firm when they returned to work on Monday morning.

Factory manager Dennis Beadman said the raiders were after the wages of the firm's 140 employees which they believed would be kept in a safe.

After smashing through the front entrance of Silicone Engineering in Blackburn's Greenbank Business Park the raiders:

Cut phone lines and disabled the alarm system

Set off the sprinkler system which flooded most of the 50,000 sq ft premises

Hot-wired a fork lift truck

Tried ramming it through a wall in the gents' toilets

Rammed another entrance and forced their way into the wages office

Smashed off the safe handle with a hammer.

Unable to get the safe open the desperate raiders turned their attention to a vending machine.

After smashing it open they escaped - with just £10 in loose change.

Mr Beadman said it was highly unlikely the culprits had any connection with the company.

"Anyone who works, or has worked here, knows that we pay our employees by cheque and do not keep large quantities of money on the premises," he said.

"The safe they went to so much trouble to try to steal was empty anyway. It was damaged beyond repair and we had to break into it ourselves."

Mr Beadman added the break-in did not cause too much disruption to business, though the gents' toilets needed repairing.

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