NEARLY £1 million-worth of property has been stolen from Selby area premises in the last year - most of it by heroin addicts, it was revealed today.

The shock figures were released by local police chiefs, who announced they would be concentrating their resources on tackling crimnes involving class A drugs such as heroin.

Central Area operations commander Superintendent Steve Barlow said there had been 248 house burglaries in the Selby area in the last 12 months, a large percentage of which had been committed by bogus callers.

He said the number of burglaries of garages, sheds and commercial premises had more than doubled to 515 and was now a big problem in Selby.

Supt Barlow was speaking at a meeting at Selby Civic Centre where the district's community safety group was launching its strategy for the next three years.

He said most of the stolen property had been exchanged for heroin, and it was the public who was now paying for that through increased insurance premiums.

Selby's dedicated drugs squad would be targeting dealers rather than users - and they would be keeping a special eye on any increase in crack cocaine, of which there had been two recent seizures in the Selby area.

Supt Barlow said their target was to reduce domestic burglaries by a third between now and March 2005.

Plans also included 12 patrols a year of crime "hotspots" by teams of special constables, an anti-bogus caller scheme to protect vulnerable residents, shed security leaflets distributed to householders and special discounts for shed alarms.

Police would also be recruiting more retailers to the Fightback scheme to reduce thefts from shops.

Supt Barlow said crime was up by 12.5 per cent in Selby, up by 22 per cent in Sherburn-in-Elmet, but down by 11 per cent in Tadcaster.

Nuisance youths were a major problem, he said, with 1,200 incidents last year in Selby, 207 in Sherburn and 85 in Tadcaster.

He said they planned to tackle the problem by extending truancy patrols and cracking down on under-age drinking by identifying shops where alcohol was being sold to under-18s.

Updated: 14:48 Tuesday, April 30, 2002