The crooks made off with the contents of 70 safety deposit boxes – with a value of around £35million – by using heavy duty metal cutters, which would have made a huge amount of noise. They scaled down inside the vault and disabled the alarms, before making off with the goods.

Letters warning of construction noise had been previously sent to residents as part of a community relations exercise from Crossrail – the project for which the construction works were undertaken, which may have alerted the gang to the opportunity.

Here at Echo Barrier we try hard to educate the construction sector about why they should be including noise reduction solutions in their site plans – to be a better neighbour, to be a better employer, to reduce the damage excessive noise can do on ears – but now we can add that they can stop multi million pound jewellery heists!

On a serious note, noise reduction is becoming an important issue for those in the construction sector, and many are starting to take action to ensure that they keep noise to a minimum. Noise reduction barriers such as Echo Barriers are the market leader and have been used on loud building projects and track maintenance and upgrade works across the London Underground for several years now. If those in charge of the site at Faringdon station had used Echo Barriers to reduce the noise from the station then maybe the thieves wouldn’t have had the cover they needed to break in……! Check out our noise reduction portfolio on the products page.