Twelve members of Britain’s biggest drug-smuggling gang have been jailed after using a Chatham warehouse to store their stash.

The men were handed a total of 91-and-a-half years behind bars after being caught with nearly £70 million-worth of super strong skunk cannabis.

It followed a long-running investigation by the Met’s Special Intelligence Section which uncovered their plot to transport skunk from Holland in flower boxes.

Officers seized 900kg of the drug - equivalent to 225,000 small street deals - during swoops on the gang's operations and recovered around £500,000 in cash.

But police believe this was just a small fraction of the quantities the network handled.

Until July 2008, the drugs were imported into the UK through Harwich ferry port in Suffolk and then transported to the warehouse in Chatham.

Records found there suggest 88 such shipments were made between June 2006 and July 2008 – which police believe would have brought in a potential £67million.

From September 2008 onwards the skunk was shipped to Hull and then taken on to a warehouse in Leeds.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Wallace, of the Met’s SIS, said: "This gang believed they were operating at the lower-risk end of the drugs trade.

"However these sentences show that it is not just drugs such as cocaine and heroin that land their suppliers with a lengthy jail term."

Southwark Crown Court heard the gang used a wholesale flower importation firm for cover.