Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Staffordshire Police are to join forces to tackle illegal cannabis farms in the city. The operation is part of the council’s ongoing Making Great Places initiative, which aims to create a “safer, greener, cleaner and fairer” city for all residents through “making people feel safe where they live”.
Launched in 2024 the initiative focuses on tackling crime and antisocial behaviour. Previous successful actions include high profile enforcement operations in Fenton and putting Transport Safety Officers on buses to reduce fare dodging and antisocial behaviour.
Cannabis next on council hit list
The operation in Fenton saw the police carry out over 500 engagements with the community to gather intelligence, along with an increase in patrols and inspections. This resulted in eight drug warrants being enacted, 11 vehicles being seized for offences including having no tax or insurance and 41 arrests made for other offences.
Speaking at the time Chief Superintendent for Stoke-on-Trent, Elliot Sherrard-Williams, described the operation as “proactive”, “visible” and involved taking “robust action”, intended to tackle what matters most to local people. During the same operation the council identified and resolved problems relating to issues including fly-tipping and carried out checks on the wellbeing of known rough sleepers in the area.
The latest operation will target cannabis farms in properties owned by the council, privately rented homes and unoccupied commercial buildings. Private landlords who knowingly allow cannabis to be grown in a property they own could face prosecution. Council tenants will see their tenancies terminated.
Council stands firm on drug action
Council leader Jane Ashworth said the council refused to allow illegal activity to compromise residents’ safety. She added: “We need to keep drugs out of our communities and out of the hands of children”.
Drug use and drug-related deaths are continuing to rise and cost UK society an estimated £20 billion a year. Cannabis is the most used illegal drug in the UK according to data published by the National Crime Agency and its cultivation, often on an industrial scale, is frequently linked to organised crime groups.
The crackdown on cannabis farms in Stoke-on-Trent will build on the existing Operation Levidrome, which has seen police detect 21 significant cannabis grows in the city in the last three months. These include cannabis farms raided by the police in the Longton, Shelton, Hanley and Burslem areas of the city.
End of the line for cannabis criminals
A 29-year-old man was arrested at the cannabis grow on King Street in Longton in the early hours of 14th May. Only days earlier an 18-year-old man was arrested at a grow based in two flats on Weston Road in Meir.
Inspector Victoria Ison of the Stoke North Local Policing Team said they were “acting proactively to identify, disrupt and dismantle cannabis grows” in the city. Drawing attention to the 260 people arrested so far on suspicion of engaging in ‘high harm’ drug-related offences as part of the ‘Making Great Places’ initiative, Inspector Ison said the partnership with the council helped the police to take forceful action against perpetrators of harm to local communities. Ison added that her officers would continue to “act on the concerns of local people and businesses as robustly as possible”.
