Sweet shop drug dealers & a secret £2m cannabis farm… inside the battle to reinvent crime hotspot as UK’s ‘Ponte Carlo’
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COPS kicked down the door to the sweet shop in a dawn raid in the home of Haribo sweets and liqourice. Behind a smiling liqourice allsorts mascot Bertie Bassett and a purple dinosaur lay a suspected cannabis farm. Local residents claim this is just one of many drug dens that have sprung up in Pontrefact, West Yorkshire, which boasts a rich tradition of sweet making.
![[Pontefract in West Yorkshire has become home to a network of drug dens, locals claim]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/drone-gv-pontefract-sun-features-957100767.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
West Yorkshire Police busted a £2.6 million marijuana farm last April after raiding a warehouse. But the somewhat forgotten town is now on the up and has been dryly dubbed 'Ponte Carlo' for its new glitzy nightlife and money pouring in. Wakefield Council has ploughed close to £30million into the town in regeneration projects.
![[Police busted a record £2.6 million cannabis farm in the town last year]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cannabis-worth-2-6m-seized-957179410.jpg?strip=all&w=830)
The town boasts its own racecourse, a Norman castle, bustling market square and vibrant nightlife with a new Ropergate Run pub crawl after new upmarket bars were built. However, locals are divided over whether Pontrefact has turned a corner from its rundown past.
![[Darren Rawlson, 52, a local taxi driver, thinks it's time to bulldoze the worst parts of town]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/local-darren-rawlston-pontefract-west-957101464.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Taxi driver Darren Rawlston, 52, said: "It's great we get people travelling in from different places across Yorkshire. "They go to do the Ropergate Run which is great fun. "Pontefract has now become a destination in itself which was never the case in the past.
![[The cannabis farm bust was the biggest single seizure in West Yorkshire Police's history]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cannabis-worth-2-6m-seized-957179461.jpg?strip=all&w=830)
"You see new faces out and it's different. I really like living here in Pontefract. It's got so much history and it's a very picturesque place.". However, the town is still blighted by shoplifting, robbery and drunken violence. Polishing his Acorn taxi car in a council estate just by the town centre, the dad-of-one added: "It does have its underbelly.
![[Pontefract's crime rate is believed to be double the national average]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sweet-shop-now-closed-police-957100694.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
