Cannabis plants worth more than £1m seized from South Gloucestershire industrial unit

We’ve seized more than 1,000 cannabis plants with a potential street value of more than £1.1m from an industrial unit in South Gloucestershire.

Information provided by a member of the public led officers to the unit in Kingswood.

They discovered electricity had been diverted from a nearby substation to power the equipment used to grow the plants. Western Power Distribution have since made the building safe.

The cannabis and equipment were removed by our Operation Viscount team before specialist crime scene investigators examined the unit. The drugs will now be destroyed.

PC Henry Bird said: “Those responsible for producing these plants were not doing it as a hobby or for their own personal use, they are organised criminals who we believe were exploiting vulnerable people to unscrupulously line their pockets.

“This seizure is a significant blow to these criminals and has prevented a large amount of drugs from hitting our streets and having a detrimental effect on our communities.”

He added: “Not only is there often a very human cost to organised cannabis grows such as this but they also pose a very real risk. Abstracting electricity in the way done at this unit is obviously illegal but it’s also extremely dangerous. It can be a real fire hazard.

“It’s thanks to the information provided to us by a member of the community we were able to take the action we did and I hope this reassures people we will always listen to you.

“Please keep coming to us with information, it really does make a difference to disrupting organised crime, safeguarding vulnerable people often trafficked or kept as slaves and to preventing the sale of illegal drugs in our communities.”