A COUNCILLOR has hit out at "despicable" thieves who took money donated for a father's funeral.
Burglars stole the clearly labelled collection box from a house in Andover Road, Bestwood Estate, sometime between Saturday and Monday.
The box was full of money donated by people to help pay for the funeral of a Bestwood man.
Two computer game consoles were also taken during the break-in.
Bestwood councillor Michael Wildgust said: "It's despicable for anyone to do anything like that.
"These are obviously people that haven't got a lot of money to spare and they've gone round to ask for help and people have given their money to help give this man a dignified funeral.
"For someone to then take it, it's way out of order.
"I hope the person who has done this feels the full force of the law and pays for what they have done, because this is something the family will never forget."
Police have made inquiries in the area but are now appealing for the wider community to help.
Anyone who saw or heard anything suspicious over the weekend should report it to the police, no matter how insignificant they think it might be. The burglars forced their way in through a back door during the break-in, before fleeing with the items.
Sergeant Ian Johnson is leading the police investigation.
"This is, without doubt, a despicable act," he said. "The collection box was clearly marked up for its purpose to raise money to pay for this man's funeral.
"Not only have the man's daughters had to deal with the grief of losing their father they now have to deal with the fact that someone has intruded on his home and callously ruined their plans to give him a respectable send-off."
Any witnesses or anyone with any information should contact Notts Police on 101, quoting incident 486 of June 3, 2013.
People can also call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
"It was really important for us to have this match," she said.
"When we host the international matches we do prefer to have the one day before the Test because it does give us that little chance to have almost a test run at it."
With 16,120 inside Trent Bridge it was a great occasion.
"It was a big success, we're really pleased," added Pursehouse.
"Even though the series was lost before this match we still only had a few hundred tickets to sell so it's fantastic that we almost achieved a sell-out.
"I think we would have sold it if there had been something on the game.
"When you look around and there's a mix of school kids, families and groups it's nice and hopefully everyone had a good day and will come back.
"The great thing is we get to do it all over again. To host the Ashes is a fantastic experience and to have the privilege of hosting the first match of the series is even better for the county.
"It's a huge compliment and when we found out we had the first one that was a really proud moment.
"When we go live with that, not only will we have a sell-out for five days if it lasts that long, but there's the global audience.
"Our venue and our county will be broadcast to countries all over the world, which is exciting."
It will be Pursehouse's first Ashes Test as Notts chief executive, after taking over the role in March 2012, but she is amazingly relaxed about it.
"The pressure actually comes from the bidding, that is more of a pressure," she said. "Of the packages that we went for three had no Test cricket between now and 2016.
"You can imagine for a venue like ours to not have any Test matches after 2012 to at least 2017 and what that would have meant for us. We would have had to make half of our staff redundant.
"It was big so there was a lot more pressure on winning the rights.
"I have every confidence in our ability to deliver. I think we're very good at that and I don't feel pressured around that, although that may change in July! Hopefully we will put on a great show."
