NEIGHBOURHOOD police have praised and repaid local residents after two cannabis farms were uncovered.

Sgt Laraine Lister said the drug factories in Horwich were able to be shut down after valuable tip-offs from members of the public.

And some of the equipment used to grow the illegal plants has been given to the local community through the Allotment Watch scheme.

The raids were carried out by members of the Horwich and Heaton neighbourhood policing team.

The first took place on May 26 in Makinson Avenue and the second on June 11 in Chorley New Road.

Sgt Lister said: "Both were similar set-ups — the full hydroponics, filtration systems and lamps. They lined all the rooms with plastic sheeting.

"The first one was a two or three bedroom operation plus the loft and the second was two bedrooms plus a basement.

"In the second house the plants were at slightly different stages of maturity but overall they were two feet tall and in the first house they were slightly bigger at between two and three feet."

Sgt Lister said 178 plants were cleared from the Makinson Avenue property and 174 plants were found at the home in Chorley New Road.

Officers who burst into the houses arrested people believed to have been tending to the apparatus and illegal plants, known as the 'gardeners'.

Sgt Lister said: "On both occasions a Vietnamese national was arrested on suspicion of cultivating cannabis.

"In the Makinson Avenue case, the suspect claimed to be a 16-year-old juvenile and in the second one he was 39 years old.

"They both claimed they were acting on behalf of somebody else."

Officers from the GMP's Modern Slavery Unit have been in touch in relation to the older suspect.

Beyond closing the operations down, the team's actions have wider ramifications for the town and its people.

Sgt Lister said: "What we're really pleased about is that the information came from the community and we were able to quickly turned around and obtain warrants and we have had a positive outcome.

"We have linked back into the community and it's not often we get a fully-rounded story

"Lots of the equipment that was seized went back into the local community through the Allotment Watch scheme.

"We had 5kg and 10kg sets of compost bags and the plant pots, and there were a couple of propagators.

"All of these went to community allotments in Horwich."

n Anyone with information on a cannabis farm can call police on 101 or speak to their neighbourhood policing team.