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A railway company is auctioning off the site of an ex-public toilet facility this week. Network Rail wants to sell the public convenience block and 0.023 acres of surrounding land, which is situated in Bath, and the auctioned item has a starting price of £20,000. The auctioneers added that the site "may afford potential for redevelopment".

A group of distraction burglars who said they were members of the police struck repeatedly over southern England, and the victims included two women in their 90s. The crime spree began in Winchester, where an elderly woman had cash and other belongings taken by the robbers. One woman did not believe the gang and refused to deal with them.

Illegal swimming in the private lake which will feature in the 2012 Olympic Games will be clamped down upon, authorities warn. Law breakers at the rowing venue are being warned they face a criminal record or serious injury after a number of recent offences.

A former barrister has gone to prison for his role in a multi-million pound immigration scam. Syed Ahmed was found guilty of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration. The ill-gotten gains were stashed in the home he shared with another member of the gang, Ahmed’s wife, Junjie Kao.

Both sets of official statistics are saying crime in England and Wales is continuing to fall. Crimes recorded by the police went down by 8% to 4.3m incidents over the year to June 2010, with large falls in car crime, criminal damage and burglary. The other set of measures used by the government, the British Crime Survey, reported a fall of 4%.

It is tempting for a local authority to close a public convenience provision because it costs too much for the day to day maintenance of toilets. In these tough economic times budget cutbacks are good excuses for a shut-down – so credit is due a council near Edinburgh for modernising, not closing, their WC’s.

Events including the Reading and V Music Festivals are among those caught up in a new website con. Fraudsters are selling fake tickets for tours and festivals from the internet. One security specialist called it "a clever scam", now worth millions. "It’s a new trend that we’ve seen escalate in the past few months," said Reg Walker, director of a security consultancy.

About 160 pupils face moving into temporary accommodation following some boys breaking into a school and a fire being started over the weekend. It is alleged 17-year-old Andrew Stretton wilfully set fire to a cardboard box in a shed, which then set the shed and the adjacent school on fire in Plean, Scotland. Mr Stretton made no plea or declaration at the brief private hearing at Stirling Sheriff Court.

A city council is entertaining proposals to almost halve the number of its public toilet facilities. Like many in public services Exeter city council is under financial pressure, and is considering reducing the city’s 26 public toilets to 16.

Dozens of vans were checked in one morning by Midlands police in order to clamp down upon the transfer of stolen metal parts. The officers’ action comes after gas meters were stolen from homes in Lower Gornal. Officers were accompanied by representatives from the Benefits Agency, Dudley Council’s environmental protection department, licensing officers and workers from BT Open Reach who were looking for stolen cables.

Lawyers involved in a case where a security guard was not entitled to comfort breaks described the decision as "ground-breaking". A tribunal has ruled that the security industry is not exempt from Working Time Regulations, and its workers should be allowed short breaks at least.

Neighbourhood Insp Lisa Musgrove, of the Sunderland Neighbourhood Policing Team, commented that a robbery at a bookmakers in Sunderland was an isolated incident. She said: “Thankfully the member of staff was not seriously injured.