Chichester pub has bin stolen for the second time in six months

Brad Joyce, 26, from Portsmouth has been running The Fountain in South Street for around a year and has been struck by two bin thefts since he started.

The first time a bin was stolen, it was dragged to the Avenue De Chartres multi-storey car park and pushed off the top, shattering the glass bottles inside.

He said: "It happened about six months ago, exactly the same thing, they took the bins from the garden and dragged them all the way over to the multi storey and chucked them off the roof. [There was] smashed glass everywhere."

"It's a little bit gutting really, you expect your grounds and your garden to be quite safe and secure but obviously some people take the opportunity when they see something like that not locked up they try and take the opportunity to do a little bit of naughtiness with it really — chancers."

Brad said that the theft of their wheelie bin was a step up from a traffic cone being stolen.

He added: "There's a level of debauchery and I think they've gone too far. All it takes for someone to be driving under the bridge and you've got a serious issue on your hands. You could be talking about a couple of people dead. Especially with the rate at which it is happening, it's not uncommon for people to be driving around at that time.

"I've mentioned the fact that it happened to a few of the guys working around the street but nobody seems to have had something like that happen to them. I'm not sure if it's because they've got larger bins but the majority of places round here do have the dumpster type bins so it's a little bit more difficult to move than a wheelie bin so that's probably what stopped that happening.

"It was quite upsetting to find out that that was what had happened again. Once we've got clear pictures on the CCTV we are taking them straight to the police."

Brad said the council had replaced the bin 'pretty much instantly' and that the theft had not affected business.