A teenager given a moped as a present lost it to thieves on Christmas Day and then had to pay £117 to recover the wrecked gift from a police pound.

Ben Reeves was forced to spend much of his Christmas money getting his stolen present back after police called him to say they had found it.

He had already dug deep into his own savings to help his family buy him the £600 49cc Atala Hacker for his 16th birthday on December 19.

On Christmas Day, he parked his new pride and joy close to his father's house in Langsdale Place, Hove, when he went to visit.

When he went to ride back to his home in Western Road the next morning, it was gone.

Police found the badly-damaged moped in nearby St Ann's Well Gardens later the same day but then told him he would have to pay £100 to collect it, plus an extra £17 for every day the bike was kept in the pound.

The bike was taken by police to a pound in Bolney, about 13 miles from Brighton.

Ben said: "It is very upsetting considering I only had the bike for a few days. I'm the victim and I have to pay to get my moped back.

"My Christmas money has had to go on my bike."

To add insult to injury, damage to the moped runs to hundreds of pounds.

The ignition had been ripped out, it had scratches up the side, its front lights were smashed and the number plates were ripped off.

The steering lock was also broken.

Because the bike was not in good enough condition to be ridden, his mother Tracey Wheeler had to borrow a van to bring it back to Hove.

Ben said: "It's completely ruined my Christmas. We are all really upset."

A Sussex Police representative said the moped had been taken to Bolney for forensic tests.

He could not comment on why police charged £100 for the return of stolen vehicles.

He said: "That was the fee arranged three years ago and it hasn't changed since. It's the standard fee."

Earlier this year, we reported how many innocent car crime victims across Sussex were paying almost £1 million a year to get their vehicles back from pounds.

From April to December last year, Sussex Police recovered more than 9,000 stolen, abandoned or crashed cars.

Owners, mostly innocent victims of crime, had to pay a minimum of a £105 recovery fee and £12 or more a day storage, a total of more than £900,000.

Recoveries were running at the rate of more than 1,000 a month, with nine privately-run car pounds collecting thousands of pounds in charges.