Warning to Hampshire landlords as police launch new clampdown

The properties are being converted into specialist growing areas for hundreds of plants which are then being chopped up and sold on the streets.

Many of the homes are being booby-trapped with electrical wiring rigged up at the door handles, while in most cases the electricity is being bypassed with clamps being placed on pipes underground.

So far this year 11 premises – each one a three or four-bed home in the Portswood, central Southampton and Shirley areas – have been uncovered.

It’s a re-emergence of the problem which blighted Southampton in 2006 and 2007, with more than 50 makeshift factories uncovered, leaving the city labelled the cannabis capital of the south.