VANDALS used a saw to cut down 14ft trees at a Burnley school in what the caretaker described as a "mindless and pathetic" act.

Mike Awty, caretaker at Rosehill Junior for seven years, said the trees were about 11 years old and had survived vandal attacks in the past when branches had been snapped.

But this weekend the vandals wrecked the copse of native deciduous trees leaving 20 trees as stumps.

Mr Awty said: "When they have been vandalised before I have been able to prune the trees back and they have started to grow again but this time they have been decimated.

"If it had happened last weekend, in time for bonfire night, I might have been able to understand. It is so mindless and pathetic. This is just sheer wanton waste. It has been a calculated act and yet they have just left the trees in the ground so I cannot understand why they have done it.

"At Easter we had 157 windows smashed at the school and last year I was spending £69 every week from my maintenance budget to replace smashed windows.

"The school paid for a camera and I installed it and since then we have only had 12 windows broken, mostly by stones being thrown at the building from the street. In the New Year we should have cameras which link up with Burnley police network."

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