After loading his van for an early start the next morning, Wayne Burgess went inside for an early night. When he returned to his vehicle in the morning, everything had been taken.

“The only thing they hadn’t taken was the ashtray,” he said.

“I was left sat in the front room thinking ‘what do I do now?’ I literally had nothing,” he said on the show.

The immediate impact was the loss of a six-to-12-month contract and its associated jobs. The break-in came hot on the heels of another case of tool theft just seven months earlier and left Burgess in a financial hole.

“I didn’t have the money to replace the equipment, because some of the equipment, especially on the commercial side is an ‘arm and a leg’. And I had built it up over years,” said Burgess.

“It very nearly cost us our house. We very nearly ended up with nowhere to live. I have never, ever been so struck with something in my life,” he added.

Other than the tools the thieves dropped as they made their getaway, none of Burgess’ tools have ever been recovered. He wasn't left with "enough tools to put up a shelf".

Friends and colleagues managed to pull together and contribute tools to get his business back on his feet. However, Burgess is left to rue the cost of replacing tools and lost business.

“It is a ridiculous situation we have got in. If we do catch ‘em, you’re suffering for longer than they are. Even if they lock them up, you are still not over it when they are back out on the street,” he said.

Burgess' experience chimed with Marc Firkin, a carpenter who appeared on day one of Anti-Tool Theft Week. After his van and tools were stolen he estimates he's racked up between GBP£10,000 of debt to replace his equipment.

The job of tool thieves is made easier by the level of information about trade businesses that is available through various trade bodies.

“I am in a trade, where anybody can ring Gas Safe and get my home address, which is something I have always found mind-numbingly-stupid,” commented Burgess.

“You can ring a trade association and get addresses of lots of people who are guaranteed to have something in the vehicle,” he added.

With the legal system not presenting much of a deterrent to thieves, Burgess believes is it a matter of time before somebody takes the law into their hands. “Nobody wants that for the simple reason, you don’t want good people, turning bad,” he added.