A CHARITY shop boss has spoken of his safety fears after yobs torched large piles of rubbish behind his Wrexham town centre premises.

Over the past few weeks Wrexham county has been hit by a spate of arson attacks in which rubbish, gorse and trees have been maliciously set alight.

After the latest incident in which a mountain of rubbish was burnt close to the wooden fencing of the Venture playground in Caia Park, Wrexham MP Ian Lucas and Clwyd South MP Susan Elan Jones have made a joint plea to Home Secretary Theresa May to put more police on the streets to stamp out the attacks.

The story in the Leader prompted shop manager Simon Jones to describe how the communal area behind the Oxfam shop in Lord Street had been targeted by the fire bugs.

He said: “We’ve had problems for some time with our rubbish bins being emptied out but one Saturday morning recently I came in to find something much worse had happened behind the shop.

“We are one of about six shops which have their bins out in the yard and every one had been tipped upside down and their contents strewn all over the area.

“Whoever did it then tried to start a number of fires in the rubbish.

“This was very worrying as some of the bins are kept quite close to the properties.

“We were just lucky a big fire didn’t start and spread to any of the shops.”

He added: “We have been working with the council about the problems of the bins being emptied out but this took things a step further.”

A North Wales Police spokesman said: “The manager was given advice by police over the phone and local patrols were made aware of the incident.”