Yateley Arsons: Two Boys Held After Garages Set Alight

Two teenage boys have been arrested on suspicion of arson after three fires were set in Yateley in under an hour on Thursday evening. Garages at Blackbushe Park were among the targets, and one was significantly damaged.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary published its appeal at 10.40am on Friday 18 September. The force’s statement sets out a sequence that ran from 8.40pm to 9.30pm on Thursday 17 September.

What the force says happened

• Officers were first called to a fire set to a palm tree on Glenavon Gardens.
• A short while later they were called to Bartons Drive, where paper had been set alight next to a fence.
• While searching the area, officers spotted four teenage boys at the entrance to Blackbushe Park.
• The boys were detained for a search. During it, officers noticed that garages in Blackbushe Park had been set alight, causing significant damage to one and some fire damage to others.

A 14-year-old boy from Yateley and a 15-year-old boy from Blackwater were arrested on suspicion of arson. The force said on Friday morning that both remained in custody.

The other two boys made off while the fire was being dealt with. Police want to identify them. They are described as being around 14 or 15 years old, one wearing a grey hoody with black shorts and the other in dark clothing.

Nobody has been charged. An arrest is not a finding that anyone has done anything wrong, and neither of the boys arrested can be named: they are under 18.

The three fires are all in one corner of the town

The statement names three streets and does not say how far apart they are. They are close together. All three sit in Moulsham Green, in the west of Yateley, and the whole sequence covers less than half a mile on foot.

Glenavon Gardens is about 0.18 miles from Bartons Drive, and Bartons Drive about 0.2 miles from Blackbushe Park, measured between the street positions recorded in OpenStreetMap. Glenavon Gardens to Blackbushe Park is 0.38 miles. The three are in the GU46 6 postcodes, in Yateley West ward.

This is the second Yateley arson appeal of the year

In April the same force appealed for witnesses after three separate fires on Yateley Common. Officers were called at 7.30pm on Friday 3 April to the stretch between Cricket Hill Lane and Tudor Drive. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service put them out and nobody was hurt. The force said then that it believed a small group of children had been in the area.

No charge has been announced in that case. The two appeals are not linked by anything the force has published, and we are not linking them here.

What the recorded crime figures show

Home Office street-level data gives a longer view than either appeal. The Yateley, Blackwater and Hawley policing neighbourhood recorded 87 criminal damage and arson offences in the six months to July 2026, the most recent month published.

April, the month of the common fires, was the worst of the six. Two of July’s eleven offences were recorded on or near Glenavon Gardens, one of the streets named in Thursday’s appeal.

Three things to hold on to when reading those numbers. Criminal damage and arson are a single category in the published data, so this is not a count of fires. The figures are mapped to the nearest street or landmark rather than an exact address. And they are counts of offences recorded by police, not of incidents that happened. They come from the police.uk open data service, supplied by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary under the Open Government Licence, and were retrieved using the force’s own boundary for the neighbourhood.

What the law says about arson

Setting fire to someone else’s property is charged as arson under section 1(3) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. It carries a maximum of life imprisonment under section 4, whatever the value of what was burned.

The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10, set by section 50 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. A child of 14 or 15 can therefore be arrested, charged and prosecuted, normally in a youth court, where reporting restrictions apply.

What it means for you

• If you saw anything in Yateley on Thursday evening, call 101 with reference 44260455804. You can also use the force’s online report form. Information can be given anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
• Check your doorbell and dashcam footage from between 8.40pm and 9.30pm. The force has asked for it specifically, and cameras on Glenavon Gardens, Bartons Drive and the approaches to Blackbushe Park are the ones most likely to hold something.
• The force has asked parents directly. Its words: “We would also ask parents of children out last night to consider whether their child could have been involved, did they come home smelling of smoke?”
• If a fire is burning now, call 999, not 101. The 101 number and the online form are for information after the event.
• Planning applications, including those for garages and outbuildings in Yateley, are listed on our Fleet planning news page.

Sources

• Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary: Witness appeal after multiple fires set in Yateley, published 10.40am, 18 September 2026, for the times, the three locations, the damage, the two arrests, the descriptions of the two boys sought, the appeal to parents and reference 44260455804.
• Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary: Witness appeal following suspected arson in Yateley, 8 April 2026, for the Yateley Common fires of 3 April.
• police.uk open data, Street-level crime for the Yateley, Blackwater and Hawley neighbourhood, February to July 2026, Open Government Licence.
• Criminal Damage Act 1971, sections 1 and 4, and Children and Young Persons Act 1933, section 50, on legislation.gov.uk.
• OpenStreetMap, for the positions of Glenavon Gardens, Bartons Drive and Blackbushe Park, from which the distances were measured.