POLICE are investigating a spate of seven burglaries in just seven days in Farnham and the surrounding area.

Between January 26 and February 1, thieves targeted homes in Lower Bourne, Lower Hale, Crooksbury Road, Tilford, Elstead and Churt.

The first took place shortly before 10am on Friday, January 26, when a male suspect smashed the side window of a home in Crooksbury Road with a hammer and entered the home, but left shortly afterwards.

At around noon the same day, thieves smashed the ground floor bedroom window of a home in Winston Walk, Lower Bourne and ransacked the house, before being disturbed and escaping over the garden fence. A suspect has since been recalled to prison.

A barn in The Reeds Road at Tilford was targeted overnight on January 28/29 but thieves left empty handed, while a lock was broken and a £100 trimmer taken from a garden shed in Churt Road sometime between 2pm on January 28 and 7.30am on January 30.

Elsewhere, police are investigating the “possible” burglary of a static caravan in Kingsmead Park in Elstead shortly before 3pm on January 30.

Most recently, two houses next door to each other were targeted in Allington Close, Lower Hale, with thieves gaining entry through the rear doors and searching the bedrooms.

Police believe they made off with a quantity of jewellery and, somewhat curiously, also reported that bleach was used upon exiting the homes.

A one-tonne digger was also stolen from a rear garden in Burnt Hill Road at around 6am on Monday, January 29, and loaded into a white transit van on cloned licence plates.

It comes after police arrested four people in the space of just two days in January after officers foiled another two attempted digger thefts.

A suspected thief was found hiding in a hedge and arrested after a micro-digger’s alarm was activated on a building site in Compton Way on the evening of January 16.

Just a day earlier three people were arrested after a dramatic police chase by foot, car, dog and helicopter after a failed attempt to steal a van and a digger from an address in Boundstone Road.

A week earlier, overnight on January 4/5, three diggers were also stolen from a site in Farnborough Road and driven across the grounds of Farnham Heath End and William Cobbett schools, smashing through a fence dividing the two schools.

Other crimes reported in the past fortnight include the theft of a motorbike in Greenfield Road, a ‘recovery vehicle’ in Brougham Place, number plates in The Fairfield, and another ‘motor vehicle’ in Upper Weybourne Lane.

For the latest crime prevention advice, visit the website www.surrey.police.uk/advice .