Police have set out plans for a crack down on derelict high streets being used for illegal activities.
Britain has seen a surge in abandoned high streets in recent years due to rising rent prices and the cost of living crisis. Criminals have taken advantage of this and decided to set up drug farms in old department stores and shops.
They are said to take advantage of free heating and lighting to grow cannabis on an industrial scale. Premises like Woolworths, Debenhams, old banks and Carphone Warehouse have all been targeted by these gangs, reports the Mirror.
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And they’re netting a fortune, with one crop in Newport, South Wales, valued at £2million. Criminals used several floors of a former department store on the main shopping street to grow more than 3,000 plants. Police have blamed the boom on the number of derelict properties in cities. And many go undetected as the lack of attractive shops turns them into ghost towns.
(Image: West Mercia Police / SWNS)
Richard Lewis, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: “Commercial properties are attractive to organised crime groups for a host of reasons. Large-scale shops have closed so the footprint to produce cannabis on a larger scale becomes available.”
Over 20,000 businesses have vanished from our towns and cities since 2010. Some 10,000 shut up shop in 2021 due to pandemic losses. Five thousand more – 14 a day – were forced to call it quits last year.
(Image: Stoke Sentinel)
In contrast, the UK cannabis market is said to be worth around £2.6billion annually. Police seized 52 million plants last year. Those busted include Florian Qalliu, an Albanian found growing £300,000 worth of the stuff in a disused HSBC bank in Penarth, South Wales. The villain, 35, was handed seven months in jail for the haul, which included 500 plants. It was a similar story for Thoan Hoang, who used an abandoned Woolworths store to cultivate 2,647 plants with a street value of around £2million. Officers seized the lot from the empty building in Longton, Staffs, and the 37-year-old got 16 months.
(Image: Pete Stonier / Stoke Sentinel)
It is just one of many busts in Stoke-on-Trent that puts the wrong sort of pot in the Potteries. Another 300 were found in an abandoned Longton town centre building in May, while over 2,000 were confiscated in nearby Hanley last October. And one of the most sought-after high streets for growers in recent years has been Tunstall – with three busts in just 12 months, the latest being in April with two men arrested and 248 plants seized.
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