A specialist West Midlands police squad which was formed to crack down on the soaring number of cannabis factories has stopped £18million worth of the drug flooding the region’s streets.

The team of officers and staff has swooped on more than 460 properties, making scores of arrests and seizing illegal plants worth more than 100,000 that would have been sold on the black market.

Figures show that the discovery of cannabis factories in the region has exploded by 281 per cent in recent years.

Police are regularly discovering “death-trap” factories packed full with high-intensity lighting that has been dangerously linked to electricity supplies.

In the Black Country, Vietnamese children as young as three-months-old have been found to be living in cramped conditions with plants growing around them.

Some families have been trafficked from their home country by organised crime gangs, while others have arrived in the back of lorries after selling everything they own.

But criminals here have been known to monitor factories and swoop to loot the cannabis once it has been grown, often attacking those inside.

And to prevent against being raided, drug growers are barricading themselves in for weeks at a time and setting booby traps for anyone trying to enter.

Since its formation in October last year, the police team has raided 468 properties, 178 of which were situated in the Black Country.

They include 50 in Wolverhampton, 56 in Sandwell, 31 in Walsall and 31 in Dudley.

Figures show there were 775 factories discovered in the West Midlands in 2009-10, compared with 203 in 2007-08.

In total, 6,886 cannabis farms and factories were discovered nationwide last year.

* Full in-depth report in Monday’s Express & Star.