Conmen on the rise in West Midlands

Conmen are targeting West Midland homes more than three times a day on doorsteps, it can be revealed today.

The number of cowboy traders and burglars who are posing as bogus officials has shot up by 22 per cent in less than two years.

Trading Standards today said cash-strapped families were increasingly falling victim to rogue tradesmen offering apparently bargain rates to carry out work.

New figures from the Consumer Direct database show 925 serious doorstep crimes were reported in the West Midlands during 2008/9 – a rate of around 77 a month – but by this year the number had increased to 1,130, or 94 a month.

Organised rings of conmen are also compiling "sucker lists" of easy targets and selling them on to other rogue traders.

Chris King, chairman of the Central England Trading Standards Authority, made up of 14 councils across the Midlands including the four Black Country authorities and Staffordshire County Council, said there had been a "significant rise" in doorstep crime.

It emerged last month that rogue rubbish collectors have been charging residents up to £30 to remove waste in Brownhills and Bloxwich and then illegally dumping it around Walsall.

In March Wolverhampton man Davia Gibbons was given a 12-month suspended jail sentence for charging pensioners for shoddy work.