A COUNCILLOR claims east Cleveland is “wide open for rich pickings” amid concern over a growing number of cannabis farms operating in the area.

Tim Gray, who represents Loftus on Redcar and Cleveland Council, said he believed a recent successful drugs bust by Cleveland Police which uncovered more than £300,000 worth of cannabis plants was the sixth such incident in two years.

Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner had praised the “brilliant result” on Facebook, thanking residents for information the force had received.

But Mr Turner’s post prompted a debate about the level of resources being allocated to the area with some calling for a 24 hour police station open to the public.

Mr Turner said this would be expensive and questioned whether it would be a good use of resources, while agreeing that he wanted to see more officers in the community.

Neighbourhood police officers returned to Loftus police station in 2019, having moved to a new base at Guisborough three years earlier, this following a local campaign for a more visible police presence.

But Cllr Gray said when the last shift departed they were replaced by “response policing” from the force’s district headquarters at Kirkleatham, near Redcar.

He said: “We got the police station open three years ago, but east Cleveland is unpoliced as far as I am concerned after the hours of 11 o’clock at night.

“The people who are setting up these farms can move around with impunity, often nobody really sees anything and there are no police about.

“Back in the day if you were a young lad in a car moving around late at night you’d be pulled and your details checked, but that’s not happening.

“After 11pm the shift goes off and we have response policing that comes out of Kirkleatham,  and that’s basically it.

“If there’s a major incident in Redcar or Middlesbrough, the response goes there – the criminals of this world aren’t stupid and know this, and realise east Cleveland is wide open for rich pickings.

“These cannabis farms, there’ve been five or six in the area in two years, those setting them up move around under cover of darkness and they know that the police aren’t there.”

He claimed residents in Loftus “could not be bothered to report anything because they don’t get a response”, giving the example of a local shop owner he knew who recently had a window broken.

Cllr Gray, who runs a bar in the town, said he had shared CCTV footage with the shop owner and had identified the culprit, but despite the matter being reported as far as he knew no-one had been to collect the evidence.

A spokeswoman for Mr Turner’s office said there was proactive community policing operating in Loftus, with neighbourhood officers tasked with gathering information and problem-solving.

“This is without getting into the response teams, dog unit, roads policing and armed response units who work across the east Cleveland area,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Cleveland Police said the move to base officers again in Loftus had received positive feedback and described “really good work ongoing from the neighbourhood officers working from there”.

She also suggested that, while needing to be checked, Cllr Gray’s figures on cannabis farm finds represented a “low number” and cannabis cultivation was unfortunately a more prevalent problem in other areas of Cleveland.