SYRINGES loaded with heroin within reach of a toddler's bed, and a child's dummy and sweets lying among tablets, knives and other drugs paraphernalia.

These were the shocking scenes that greeted officers who raided a Hampshire home being used as a drug den.

Today the three-bedroom semi-detached home in Barnsland, West End, near Southampton, is boarded up and sealed off to prevent anyone entering.

The previous occupants have fled, the three-year-old that had been living there is in care, and there is now an official order barring anyone entering the house without police permission for the next three months.

Neighbours living in the normally peaceful residential area are hoping it means their nightmare is finally at an end.

For years they have suffered with antisocial behaviour and abuse from the addict tenants and the scores of visitors that would turn up at the house at all hours of the day to buy and sell hard drugs.

Yesterday Southampton magistrates granted Hampshire police a crack house closure order, the first of its kind in the Eastleigh area, allowing them to evict the occupants and seal the property.

District judge Lorraine Morgan agreed with officers that there was sufficient evidence of drug use and dealing, and of a serious nuisance to nearby residents, that she could grant the order.

Within hours, police and officials from Atlantic Housing, which owns the property, had swooped to board up the windows and doors and start the long, expensive process of turning it back into a family home.

Inside they found a shell.

Anything the addicts thought they could sell had been removed, including carpets and a fireplace.

The only items the tenants had properly cleared away after the latest police raid on the property were the used and new syringes, and anything needed to mix and prepare their narcotics.

There was also no further sign of any wraps of heroin or cocaine, bags of tablets, cannabis, or the bicarbonate of soda used to turn cocaine into powerful crack, all of which police had seized on previous visits.

Officers had taken swabs in every room of the house, including bedrooms, the kitchen, toilet and bathroom to test for evidence of hard drug use.

All but one came back positive.

Inspector Shona Hood, who is in charge of community policing in the area, last night told the Daily Echo the order shows police take residents' concerns seriously.

"For several years we've had problems with drug taking, antisocial behaviour and threats and intimidation to neighbours," she said.

"We couldn't tolerate this sort of behaviour any more, and it wasn't fair for the residents to have to put up with this type of behaviour.

"Hopefully, this order will reduce the antisocial behaviour in the area."