TWICE in little over a month police swooped on two rural properties in Fenland to seize drugs worth millions of pounds on UK streets, it emerged today.

Both properties were only eight miles apart, both ‘staffed’ by separate gangs, and both raided by police within just six weeks of each other.

In the latest case, at Cambridge Crown Court, it was revealed that around 7,500 cannabis plants were found in a barn at Tree Farm, Hill Row, Haddenham, on July 9. The plants were worth �2.5 million and covered an area the size of a football pitch.

Six men face various charges relating to the seizure but not guilty pleas were entered by two defendants who will face trial later. Sentence on the others was adjourned.

The court heard it was the biggest ever find of a cannabis farm in Cambridgeshire and the court case comes just weeks after the ringleader of another gang caught producing cannabis plants near Chatteris with a street value of �674,000 was jailed for six years.

The court heard how grand father Raymond Reid, 58, masterminded the drugs operation, which was based in a warehouse at Lower Mount Pleasant Farm in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, between January 2009 and May 19 this year.

When the premises were raided by Surrey Police as part of Operation Tring on May 18, officers found a total yield of 118kg of skunk cannabis, with a wholesale value of �324,500 or street value of �674,000.

If police had not intercepted the network, it is estimated the factory would have been capable of producing 354kg of cannabis in a year, worth a street value of more than �2million.