A SERIES of raids in Cambridgeshire was the reason for a large increase in drug arrests in the county last year, the county’s police force said.

The force’s annual performance figures showed that officers dealt with more than 3,200 drugs offences in the year 2011/12 – an increase of more than 20 per cent.

The figures also showed that total crime was down by more than eight per cent – 55,240 offences in 2011/12, from 60,275 the previous year – with the largest fall in robberies, down a third.

The only rise in offences was in incidents involving drugs.

But a series of high-profile raids in 2012, including in Operation Vanguard on April 24, the discovery of Huntingdonshire’s largest drugs factory in Ceris Court, off Glebe Road, Huntingdon, on February 1, and a smaller farm found in Cambridge Road, St Neots, a few days later, were behind the increase.

A police spokesman said: “This increase demonstrates how pro-active officers are in tackling the supply of drugs in Cambridgeshire. This is a culmination of many raids we’ve carried out across the county, including Operation Vanguard, which was a long-term investigation into the large scale supply of class A drugs in Cambridgeshire, mainly high-purity cocaine.”