A Headteacher and nursery owner have spoken of their anger after two schools were targeted by burglars causing thousands of pounds of damage.

The separate incidents took place over last weekend.

Two windows were smashed in an attempted burglary on Puddleducks Nursery on Blackburn Road, Rising Bridge on Saturday, July 12. Nothing was stolen but damage of £1,500 has dealt a blow to owners of the business, which has only been open for a few weeks.

Nursery owner Sue Lord said: “There is nothing to steal here, we don’t leave anything of value. When we turned up on Saturday night there was glass everywhere.

“The alarm must have frightened whoever it was away. They didn’t take anything, but they caused around £1,500 worth of damage.

“We have only been here just over a month, we have put so much effort in to this and then someone can come along and do that, it’s just terrible.”

In a separate incident, burglars smashed their way into a primary school by throwing a brick at an office window.

Raiders struck at St John with St Augustine’s school on Maudsley Street in Accrington after breaking a padlock on entry to the school grounds.

Duty Inspector Conrad Tapp, of Lancashire Police, said: “They have gone to an office window, broke through and climbed in. As far as we can tell nothing has been taken.”

The incident happened sometime between 9pm on Friday, July 11 and 6.40am on Monday, July 14 and CCTV is being examined.

Headteacher Mark Proctor praised the school safety measures after the offenders left empty-handed.

He said: “We came in on Monday morning and found the damage. Whoever it was had thrown a brick through the secretary office window and climbed in.

“As far as we can tell nothing has gone missing and then haven’t taken anything but it’s caused a lot of damage to the office. The rest of the school was unaffected.

“It is shocking how somebody would try to spoil a child’s school and we will have to spend money fixing this rather than on children’s education.

“We have got extremely good safeguarding procedures in place and because of that whoever tried to get in didn’t have any access to confidential records as everything is kept safe and secure.” Call Lancashire Police on 101.