People living across Norwich have today been warned to be vigilant against criminals looking to cash in on rich pickings under the cover of darkness, with the clocks having gone back.

This time of year traditionally sees a rise in burglaries with the darker evenings providing a veil of anonymity to opportunistic crooks, but police have teamed up with the Norwich Evening News to prevent people from being victims.

We will be running our Beat the Burglar campaign all week, offering readers information about how they can best protect themselves against becoming a victim and highlighting how burglaries are investigated and brought to court.

With the clocks having gone back yesterday, the Norwich Evening News talked to Detective Superintendent Neil Bailey, of Norfolk police's County Delivery Unit, based at Norwich's Bethel Street police station, who has backed the campaign.

He said: 'We're aware that there's a spike around this time of year when the clocks go back and another one just before Christmas, and the way police patrols are managed takes that into account as best we can.

'If the campaign raises people's awareness about their own security and if it makes them think about the vulnerability of some of the people around them, then it's certainly worthwhile, particularly for elderly members of the community or people who are not so mobile.

'They are the people that need the support of those around them and if it makes just one of those people reach out, then it's worth it.'

In the past 12 months there've been 1,314 burglaries in Norfolk compared to the previous year when there were 1,720, while in Norwich in the past 12 months there've been 436 dwelling burglaries compared to 511 in the previous year.

For full story see today's paper.

Tomorrow: The role played by crime scene investigators.