Hatton Garden heist
The contents of 56 safe deposit boxes were taken during the raid in London's jewellery district over the Easter weekend Metropolitan Police

Four men have admitted their involvement in the £10m Easter weekend Hatton Garden Safety Deposit raid, at Woolwich Crown Court.

John Collins, Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins and Perry Reader all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle the Hatton Garden deposit. The admission does not mean the men carried out the burglary but that they participated in an agreement or encouragement of the offence.

Perkins, 67, of Heene Road, Enfield, Collins, 74, of Bletsoe Walk, Islington, Jones, 58, of Park Avenue, Enfield and Reader, 76, of Dartford Road, Dartford, were arrested in May and will return to the court at a later date to be sentenced. Five further suspects will appear in court in November charged with conspiracy to burgle.

The pleas come after Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company went into liquidation after falling into insolvency. A law firm representative said the company owed money "to companies and people".

The dramatic raid of Hatton Garden Safety Deposit, near the City of London, happened over the Easter Weekend when a masked gang used power tools, including an angle grinder, concrete drills and crowbars to break into the facility on Thursday, 2 April.

They plundered 72 safety deposit boxes containing £10m worth of valuables. In scenes reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster, the thieves disabled a second floor lift and climbed down to the basement of the deposit in Holborn before drilling through a 6ft (2m) thick vault wall.

There was no sign of forced entry to the outside of the building and the thieves disabled the communal lift on the second floor and then used the lift shaft to climb down into the basement. It was not until five days after the gang first entered the building that the Met Police finally arrived at the scene.