Two men who carried out a series of burglaries at houses in Worcestershire and nearby, targeting high-value cars parked on driveways, have both been jailed.

One of the burglaries happened at a home in Church Road, Crowle, near Worcester, in the early hours of the morning.

Prosecutor David Jackson said the offences involved a total of 17 domestic burglaries committed over a two- to three-week period from mid-August until early September.

The two men had entered their pleas on the basis that Wood had been involved in 11 of the burglaries, and Lumbard had taken part in ten of them.

One of those Lumbard admitted to was the one in Crowle, where the owner was in bed when he was woken by noises from downstairs, and when he went down he could see two men wearing masks and dark clothing stealing his £42,000 Audi S3.

To do so, they had got into the house through an open rear window and taken the keys to the Audi and another car which they had to move to get the more valuable car off the drive.

But they later abandoned the Audi on a pub car park after realising it had a tracker which they were unable to disable.

Another offence was at a house in a cul-de-sac in Henley-in-Arden where a neighbour became suspicious when he saw a new Mercedes he did not recognise.

He believed the occupants were looking for a house to target so passed its number to police who carried out checks on it.

It transpired it had been hired by Lumbard in his own name from a car hire company at Birmingham airport, clearly hoping the posh car would make them seem less suspicious in the areas they were targeting.

But it was the car that helped trap Lumbard and Wood – because, unknown to them, it was fitted with a sophisticated tracker system which monitored the car’s every move.

When the police later examined the tracker data from the Mercedes, it showed the engine had been switched off outside the burgled house at 1.06am and driven away ten minutes later.

He said the team were foiled in their attempt to steal a car during their next raid – because the householders were on holiday, and the car on the drive belonged to their neighbour.

Another one that Lombard, of Greaves Square, King's Norton, Birmingham, was involved in without Wood, of Dawlish Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham, was abandoned when the alarm was set off, but in the next raid they got the keys to a £40,000 Audi A4 which was then stolen.

Observing that all the burglaries were similar, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano asked whether the keys to expensive cars were the only things taken.

Mr Jackson said that in most cases it was, but on some occasions small amounts of cash kept with the keys were also taken.