A CRACK house was closed down in a police drugs raid at a block of flats in Maidstone.

Officers from Maidstone and Malling executed a search warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) at a flat in Sunningdale Court, off Square Hill Road on Tuesday morning.

Residents had complained about serious anti-social behaviour of the occupants and many visitors to the flat for some time.

Six people were found inside and drugs testing equipment showed high levels of illegal drugs, including cocaine, cannabis and heroin were present in the flat.

Four of the six found inside, two men and two women, were issued with Anti-Social Closure Notices and asked to leave the premises and not come back, or they would be arrested. They all left.

The remaining two, a man and a woman, were arrested and taken to Maidstone Police Station, where they were also served with closure notices and told not to return to the flat.

The woman was also cautioned for possession of drugs, while the man who was charged with handling stolen property and with an unrelated drugs offence.

He was bailed in relation to other offences, pending further enquiries into property seized from his flat at the time of the warrant.

The flat was sealed with steel shutters and a closure notice was posted outside.

After the raid, police posted information letters along with Rat on a Rat leaflets, which promote Crimestoppers and encourage people to phone in with drug-related information, to other nearby flats.

Magistrates in Maidstone granted a Closure Order for the flat on Friday, June 3.

Mark Barnes, Director of Housing at Maidstone Housing Trust, which manages Sunningdale Court, said: "Working in partnership with the police has resulted in the closure of one of our flats from which drug related activities had caused considerable distress and disturbance to other tenants in that block.

"Possession proceedings will also ensure the tenant will not return to this flat. We will not tolerate this type of illegal and disturbing activity."

Supt Mark Salisbury, area commander, said: "This was Maidstone and Malling’s first ‘crack-house’ closure - a highly successful operation to disrupt drug dealers and users in our area and to show that we will not tolerate this kind of criminal, anti-social behaviour in our community.

"We will not hesitate to run similar operations in the future and those individuals involved in drugs should be warned that they will be caught and dealt with.

"We received very encouraging feedback from residents in the vicinity of the flat in question and we would now urge them, and others, to keep us informed, either via the police station telephone number of 01622 608189, or Crimestoppers – 0800 555 111."