Houses used as cannabis factories

Police believe the cannabis factories are the work of organised gangs

Nearly 100 homes in Nottinghamshire have been rented by international drugs gangs to turn into cannabis factories, it has been revealed.

Most are rented from reputable landlords with no idea their properties are being used to grow the drug.

Nottinghamshire Police have started a campaign to warn landlords about the potential dangers.

Barry Harper of Nottinghamshire Police's Drug Directorate said it was often the work of overseas gangs.

He said: "We suspect that it's organised gangs and they do tend to be Vietnamese or Chinese nationals that are committing these crimes and there's an awful lot of money wrapped into these gangs. And they can make quite a lot of money in a short space of time."

A campaign to uncover these secret factories and root them out began on Monday.

In the last two years, Nottinghamshire Police alone have found 200 cannabis farms hidden inside rented houses and believe the gangs behind this may even have started exporting the drugs they make overseas.

Ninety-five of those houses were rented by organised Vietnamese or Chinese gangs, police said.

One landlord, Ian Foster, was stunned after discovering bedrooms and an attic had been turned into a cannabis production line.

"They actually bypassed our main meter, they went actually into the main electricity power source coming into the house and that would have taken somebody with a lot of skill to do that."

He now faces a significant amount of work repairing the damage before the property can be rented out again.