SIGNS promoting a charity event for Kirkwood Hospice were stolen, damaged and dumped.

Howard Jennings has sold bedding plants from his Fenay Bridge home in aid of the hospice for the last 10 years, raising more than £1,000 so far this year.

But five signs directing people to his home on Station Road were stolen in the early hours of Thursday morning.

He later found them dumped and damaged in a gully near to Kirkheaton cemetery.

Mr Jennings said: “It is very sad when someone does this. I pity them actually. Doing this has no benefit to anyone at all.

“This is for charity, we’ve raised more than £1,000 this year and I hope it will be around £2,000 by the time we finish.

“The signs aren’t worth a lot, I made them on my computer, but they helped people find us, buy bedding plants and support the hospice.

“We’ve had fewer people coming along in the last couple of days since it happened, one person came and told us they thought we weren’t doing it because the signs had gone.”

The signs were taken from around the Wakefield Road and Station Road areas of Fenay Bridge.

Mr Jennings, of Castle Hill Nurseries, added: “They risked being seen, caught and for what?

“We were just selling garden plants, I wasn’t doing this for myself.

“I feel disappointed. We’ll still carry on selling them for the charity, it won’t stop us.”

But the theft has not deterred them, they’re continuing to sell plants all month for the hospice and other local causes.

It will cost them a couple of hundred pounds to replace the signs.