TWO men who set up a commercial cannabis factory in a Worcester house to grow plants worth up to £37,000 have both been jailed for three years.

Marcin Pobiegly, aged 29, and 27-year-old Lukasz Kloch converted the two upstairs bedrooms and a loft space into growing areas while they slept downstairs at the house in Vauxhall Street, Rainbow Hill, Worcester Crown Court was told.

White plastic sheeting was taped to the walls and floors to stop the smell, hydrometers and thermometers were installed, there was an extraction fan, heating and lighting and the electricity meter had been bypassed, Dan White, prosecuting, told a sentencing hearing at Worcester Crown Court.

He said the factory was uncovered when police were called following reports of a fight involving "three foreign men with weapons" in the street on the afternoon of January 26 this year.

When they arrived, the men had gone but when officers investigated, they looked through a window and saw a machete in the house.

Officers went to the back and front and when the door was opened, it was immediately clear there was an overwhelming smell of cannabis, Mr White said.

Police found 97 plants in various stages of maturity capable of producing £37,000 of skunk cannabis at street level prices.

Mr White said neighbours had noticed a smell of cannabis in the street from October, 2015, and had seen a large number of visitors who would leave their cars at the end of the road, go to the door of the house and leave soon afterwards, establishing it as a commercial operation.

Pobiegly and Kloch pleaded guilty to producing cannabis.

A third man, Andrzej Ratowski, aged 27, also pleaded guilty to the charge but was found at an earlier hearing to have played a lesser role.

He lived in the house but had been told the plants were none of his business and he had watered them on only one occasion.

All three followed proceedings through a Polish interpreter.

Satneer Pnaiser, defending, said Pobiegly and Kloch knew they had made a "foolish decision."

She said they had no previous convictions and were very remorseful.

They were both single young men with no children and they fully intended to find work on their release, she said.

They initially claimed they smoked up to 11 grams a day between them and the cannabis had been for their own use but Recorder Anthony Lowe said there was evidence it had been grown for commercial reasons.

He jailed them both for three years minus the time they had spent in custody on remand.

Ratowski was given a 12 month community order for 12 months with 180 hours unpaid work.