A SUCKLEY man has been ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work for growing cannabis.
Nigel Halion of Birchwood Road plead guilty to cannabis production and abstracting electricity and was also sentenced at Hereford Crown Court to 12 months in prison, suspended for 24 months, for the production and six months suspended for 24 months for the abstraction. A destruction order was also made relating to drugs paraphernalia.
The 59-year-old, a financial advisor with no previous convictions, had been living with his family in a caravan for five years while they were building a house on the site.
It needed a further £10,000 spent on it and that and their substantial debts meant he began growing cannabis in a secret room especially built above a garage.
Halion was arrested on March 21 after a warrant was executed at his address as part of Operation Cavalry, which saw 19 arrests made and drugs and cash worth tens of thousands of pounds recovered.
