EMPLOYEES at a skip hire firm are keeping their fingers crossed that Bank of England officials give them damaged cash they found in a bin bag.

Mark Hanson, from Quicker Skips on Clifton Street, Burnley, said that employee Kevin Ball uncovered a black bag filled with thousands of pounds’ worth of £20 notes at their site last month.

Mr Hanson said no-one had come forward with enough evidence to show they own the loot and Lancashire Police handed it back to the business.

Now they have managed to get serial numbers from the cash and sent it to the Bank of England to see if they will reimburse them with cash.

He said: “We managed to bring it all together and found that it was £7,000 instead of £2,000, which we originally thought.

“We are hopeful that the Bank of England can give us the money.

“Anything they can give us is a bonus as we did not expect to find anything in the first place.

“They were not in a great condition with some them moth-eaten and cut in half. Also a lot of the notes were wet.

“We will hopefully split some of the money among the workers and also give some to charity.

“We do quite a lot of things for the community.”

Mr Hanson insisted that people had come forward trying to claim the loot.

He said: “We had a few phone calls but they were lying.

“One person in particular rang to say they had lost £2,000 but their skip was not even sent to them on the day that we found it, so it was obviously not her.

“We tried to investigate who could have owned it but during Christmas we have got a lot of skips going in and out but we had a backlog and did not go through them.”

Mr Hanson says they have been helping with projects including at Barden Lane playing fields by providing skips.

Mr Hanson believes it was not the first unusual find that the skip hire firm has discovered.

He said: “We put it on a skip group on Facebook and asked if anyone had found something similar,” said Mr Hanson.

“They did say that Blackburn Skips had found a lot of money but not as much as we had found.

“We are now running a blog to try to give advice to people what to do if they are clearing a property.

“Some people throw away purses but if you look carefully there may be necklaces hidden inside.”