Two suspected cannabis farmers were arrested by police after a chase through the streets of Hucclecote.

The men were detained yesterday on suspicion of drug cultivation and manufacture after a vehicle drove past a house being used as a cannabis factory while police officers were raiding it.

Officers had shown up at the large bungalow in leafy Green Lane in Hucclecote at 8.15am and smashed their way in with a battering ram.

Although they didn't find anyone in, they did find 476 cannabis plants, which would produce drugs with a street value approaching £500,000.

The officer in charge of the operation, Inspector Mike Wilkinson, of Hucclecote station, said: "We had a tip-off from members of the local community that there had been some suspicious activity.

"People told us of very short visits to the house at odd times. Officers from the Hucclecote Safer Community team raided the house and found the plants."

As well as police, in plain clothes and wearing face masks and purple latex gloves, staff from electricity company Central Networks were called to work on the junction box at the house.

The electricity meter had been bypassed to keep lights and heaters running full time to grow the marijuana plants.

A resident, who did not wish to be named, said: "The people seen to be renting the place have been there maybe three months.

"You very rarely see them, the curtains were always drawn and people used to wonder if anyone was actually there.

Another nearby resident said: "It's so quiet down here, I'm a little bit shocked to tell that truth that something like this has happened."

As police searched the house and Central Networks staff worked on the junction board by the front door, two men drove past the house in a blue car.

They parked in a nearby residential caravan park and hurried away through an alleyway leading to Lobleys Drive, with police in pursuit.

Police reinforcements were alerted and a search of the area, including the police helicopter and dog handler, followed.

A man was arrested in a nearby housing estate and another soon detained in the smart residential street of Fox Close.

He was searched by officers before being put in the back of a car and driven away.

Two men were arrested on suspicion of cultivation and manufacture of a Class C drug.

One is a 20-year-old man, the details of the other have not yet been released.