Owner of Sheffield sandwich shop urges council to fix ‘broken’ CCTV after break-in

Deli-shuss, on Church Street, was broken into at some time between 2.30pm Friday, March 17 and 9am Saturday, March 18 after its large window, worth £600, was smashed.

Vaughan Steel, who has owned the sandwich shop for 24 years this month, was alerted to the vandalism on Saturday morning by a neighbouring shop owner. He then found that £400 had been taken from the till.

Council-owned CCTV outside the shop would have captured the incident, however when Mr Steel contacted the council for the footage, he claims he was told that it had not been working “for a year”. Sheffield City Council has been approached for comment.

Mr Steel said: “It’s absolutely ridiculous, a massive camera right outside the shop and they’ve not bothered sorting it out.

“Sheffield Council are just leaving things to go unnoticed and not doing anything about it. It's not as though it just happened a week ago, the CCTV cameras haven’t been working for a year apparently.”

South Yorkshire Police attended the incident on Saturday morning to look for forensic evidence. Mr Steel believes the perpetrator will not be caught without video footage and that without the camera being fixed there will be no deterrent for people committing crimes.

He added: “Time after time you see windows broken all over Sheffield town centre, these things happen all the time, and to have CCTV cameras not working in the centre is scandalous really.”

A police spokesperson said: “Enquiries are ongoing at this time and anyone who has any information which could help the investigation is asked to call 101 or contact our online portal, quoting incident number 310 of 18 March.”