Plants worth £500,000 and beds found at factory over three floors of derelict block

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A vast cannabis factory, covering three floors of a derelict tower block scheduled for demolition, has been found in the middle of a housing estate.

Police had to get through an internal steel-barred door, reinforced with a metal grille and an industrial-sized padlock, before discovering the operation.

Inside, officers found plants with an estimated street value of £500,000, along with living quarters and food stocks for people working at the factory.

A loading winch had been fitted into one of the building’s empty lift shafts.

The 20-storey block, Warstone Tower, in Bromford Drive, Birmingham, has been earmarked by the city council for demolition and was cleared of residents some time ago.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Accommodation at the cannabis factory. Photograph: West Midlands Police/PA

West Midlands police’s cannabis team found plants growing on the 16th floor and equipment across the 15th and 17th floors, covering 31 rooms in total.

Electricity was being abstracted, while another room had containers holding gallons of water with a pumping system installed, along with ducting for the air-conditioning system.

The growers had also knocked holes in the floors, ceilings and walls to run hundreds of feet of piping and cable. Wiring had also been run up the internal staircases.

Inside the warren of rooms, there were beds, mattresses, duvets and pillowcases, along with food provisions, including a box of tomatoes.

Officers arrived after a member of the public called police on 24 January.

Five men were arrested at the scene on suspicion of cannabis cultivation.

DI Jim Church, of West Midlands police, said: “This is a sophisticated, organised crime operation that has clearly been running for some time, but which we’ve now been able to dismantle.

“We’ll be working throughout the day to establish the full scale of it and make the property safe.”