I RECENTLY read about the gentleman in Over Hulton who confronted burglars in his property and can relate to his feeling regarding the police non attendance.

Just before last Christmas I was burgled whilst I was out and phoned the police who said they would attend as I explained I lived alone.

In fairness Scene of Crimes came out reasonably quickly and managed to get quite a good fingerprint by the back door. So I was quite hopeful the criminals would be caught.

I waited several hours and rang for an update on how long the officers would be and was told it would probably be the day after.

I waited in but nothing happened so I contacted our local PCSO who came as quick as he could and put it on the system so that I would have a crime number for insurance purposes A couple of day later I received a letter with the crime reference saying the case had been closed and asking for a list of damage and description of items stolen.

I wrote to the local Inspector expressing my concerns on how burglaries were dealt with but to this day I have not had a reply.

I know burglary has been downgraded as a crime but when someone has invaded your space caused over £4,000 of damage and stolen personal items to the value of over £2,000 I feel that this cannot be compared with stealing a low value item from a supermarket.

The impact of the 'crime' is that my insurance has gone up considerably as I could not change whilst claims were pending but more importantly is the distress caused to myself.

I appreciate that the police officers are understaffed but I do not think that house burglary is a low level crime.

Name and address supplied