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A worker helps police remove the thousands of cannabis plants which will be destroyed
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Thousands more dope plants found

MACCLESFIELD detectives this week began their hunt for the criminal gang that masterminded and ran a massive cannabis factory in the town centre.

Bridge Street’s four-storey drug farm contained more than TWICE as much marijuana as police first thought – housing 17,500 plants.

And the street value of the haul is now estimated at TWO MILLION POUNDS – probably the largest of its kind ever discovered in the UK. Detectives first suspected that two illegal immigrants were running the operation for 18 months before a fire broke out on April 5, causing them to flee.

Macclesfield cop boss, Inspector Gareth Woods, said: "We don’t know what nationality the criminals are at this point, but we’re working closely with the immigration service in a bid to identify them and track them down."

Officers last night started trawling through the forensic data found at the property – including 42 different fingerprints – in a bid to close the net on those responsible.

The local investigations emerge from a background of national headlines about an increase in Vietnamese drug rings throughout the country and across the border, in Scotland.

Police originally found 8,000 plants in the Bridge Street house, which put it in line with one of the largest farms in the UK. But once the fire-ravaged building was secured, crime scene investigators were able to plumb the depths of the building’s murky basement, and have uncovered dozens of bin bags containing thousands more harvested marijuana plants.

Insp Woods added: "Obviously the most important thing to do when we first discovered the factory was to secure the building and make sure the structure was safe after the fire. Once this was done, we could then send in the crime scene investigators and do a full search of the building. The last place to look was the basement. In addition to the plants in the main body of the house, we found thousands more harvested plants in the basement. They were split into binbags, with around 80 or 90 per bag. We now believe there were around 17,500 plants overall, with an estimated street value of £2m."

The haul of plants was collected last week by specialist company Crackdown Ltd, based in Rochdale, who then destroyed them all.

One Bridge Street resident expressed her "total shock" when she realised she was living less than 50 yards from a four-storey professional drug den.

Sandy Law, who has lived on the sleepy street for 20 years, said: "I’ve never seen anything at all that would make me think the building was a cannabis factory.  I was really, really surprised when I found out. It was a total shock. I never smelled anything or heard anything. It’s really frightening to think that the place could have blown up with all those chemicals inside."

Find out how 17,500 dope plants were removed - see this week's Express.

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