SCROOGE-like scoundrels have pulled the plug on one household s Christmas by stealing their new festive lights. Cheryl Boswell had been planning to decorate the outside of her home, in Baldock Road, Royston, with the brand new solar-powered lights. Howeve

SCROOGE-like scoundrels have pulled the plug on one household's Christmas by stealing their new festive lights.

Cheryl Boswell had been planning to decorate the outside of her home, in Baldock Road, Royston, with the brand new solar-powered lights.

However, after leaving the two sets on her front doorstep on Monday lunchtime to charge up, she was shocked to discover that they had been stolen when she returned home two hours later.

She said: "I am so angry as I had only bought them this year. How selfish of some creep to steal them, I was spitting mad when I got home.

"They weren't even prominently on display yet, I had the just left them on the front step with the solar panels exposed so that they would charge and be ready for the evening.

"The lights themselves were still in the box, and they've actually left another set behind, perhaps he or she thought they were doing me a favour."

Designed to be displayed outdoors, the lights, which cost around �30, come with the separate solar panels which have to be placed in direct sunlight to be charged during daylight hours.

Mrs Boswell added: "It's not even as if my house is right on the street, we have a big front garden with railings and a gate so they've had to come up to my house to take them. The box was no more than nine inches square so they can't have seen it and acted on the spur of the moment.

"It just makes me so cross, they're only a box of lights after all, where is these people's Christmas spirit?"

A spokesman for Hertfordshire Police said that the force had not received any reports of Christmas light-related crime so far this year in Crow Country

She said: "I don't think it's a massive problem with these sorts of thefts in the Royston area or in Hertfordshire generally.