A COUPLE are furious and their young daughters upset and disappointed after a bag containing £300 of clothes was taken from outside their home.

Jo Pett was getting daughters Jessica, ten, and Millie, two, ready to go and stay at their gran’s house. She had placed the clothes in a recycling bag outside, ready to be loaded into their car.

Mrs Pett and husband, Terence, of Colne Road, Halstead, went back indoors to get their two-month-old baby son, Oliver, and when they came out, realised the bag had gone.

The children cried when they were told the theft meant they had no clothes with which to go away, so the visit had to be cancelled It would have been Millie’s first time staying with her grandmother.

Mrs Pett, 40, said: “I was shocked. The first few days, we were really worried because we thought they might come back, or if it was a random sort of person, we were concerned they’d been keeping an eye on us. We thought ‘what if one of the kids had been taken instead?’. I’m still a bit nervous.”

While his wife phoned the police, Mr Pett drove around to see if anyone nearby was collecting waste for recycling. Mrs Pett also called organisations which collect for charity, but none had been out that day.

However, police spokesman Helen Cook said police still believed the bag might have taken by mistake by a collector.