A DEBT-ridden financial adviser has avoided jail despite admitting producing cannabis at his home.

Nigel Halion, aged 59, was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence yesterday after police found 20 mature plants in a specially built room above a garage at his home in Suckley.

Hereford Crown Court was told how Halion, who had no previous convictions, had been living with his family in a caravan in Birchwood Road for five years while building a house.

But he needed a further £10,000 spent on the construction and, being in debt, he began growing the drug for financial advantage. A warrant was executed at his home on March 21 as part of Operation Cavalry and he was arrested at the scene.

Officers, however, had some difficulty locating the plants, eventually having to cut through plasterboard to get to them. Halion also admitted a charge of abstracting electricity.

For producing the drug he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 24 months, and ordered to carry out 150 hours’ unpaid work.

A destruction order was also made relating to the drugs paraphernalia.

For the electricity abstraction, Halion was given a sixmonth prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Halion’s arrest in March came in the same week as police officers executed 16 unrelated drug warrants in Worcester and surrounding villages which saw a total of 13 people arrested for drugrelated offences.

During this time, drugs including cannabis, crack cocaine, diazepam and methadone with a potential street value of £21,000 were seized along with £12,000 in cash suspected of being the profits from drug dealing.

An imitation firearm and a machete were also seized.