Popular Horsham organisation targeted by thieves

IT event organisers HackHorsham, which is turning the town into a digital hub, said a lock was broken on one of its garages in Farhalls Crescent between Monday June 10 and Thursday June 27.

Co-founder Nik Butler said three Samsung 20inch HDMI monitors, eight Raspberry Pis, five keyboards and mice and two extension leads were taken.

The burglary has come as HackHorsham was preparing for this weekend’s Code Club Festival.

Six members of the MET Office technical team will be travelling to Horsham from their base in Exeter for the first Code Club festival with HackHorsham.

Code Club is a nationwide network of volunteers who run free coding clubs for children aged nine to 13 years.

There are currently more than 10,000 clubs around the world in over 100 countries.

On Sunday July 9, ten Code Clubs from Sevenoaks, Crawley, Horsham, Southwater, Burgess Hill and Brighton will descend on the Capitol Theatre and Parkside in Horsham to work on specially ‘designed for the event’ coding projects with Pi-Top (Startup from London) and the MET Office.

Running alongside the workshops is a game development competition being judged by Horsham-based games developer, and BAFTA award-winning studio, Creative Assembly.

HackHorsham, which has arranged the event, said: “Horsham is hosting this pilot event, yet another example of the incredible STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) projects being run here.

“You only have to look at even the past few weeks, let alone years, to see the developments in this area - STEMFest in the Carfax, local schools attending the Big Bang Fair, the Rebel Makers Club, Collyer’s travelling to the US for a major Robotics competition, St Mary’s Primary School winning the PA Consulting National Raspberry PI competition, a thriving co-working space in the Carfax - never has there been a better opportunity to get involved locally, no matter your age or background.

“Horsham is now truly respected as a digital hub.”

Speaking about the burglary Mr Butler said: “They took the Really Useful boxes filled with the equipment, smashed up some property in the garage and broke the garage lock to do so.

“Whilst we are still trying to get registered as a charity much of the funding for HackHorsham comes from my company ‘Reduced Hackers’. The kit stolen had been donated by Reduced Hackers and Red River Software.”

He added the organisation would be purchasing replacement parts for this weekend’s event but it was also looking for volunteers to ‘be on standby’ to lend them kit if needed.

“We are grateful for the outpouring of support and aid from Horsham community on Facebook to offer help,” he said. “Add to that the efforts made by volunteers to cover the loses it demonstrates that despite a setback Horsham can remain Home to Digital.”

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on.

1) Make our website your homepage

2) Like our Facebook page

3) Follow us on Twitter

4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out!

Always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.