JAIL sentences totalling 20 years and six months have been imposed on three men and a woman who set up a major drug dealing business in a Hereford council flat.

Police arrested the gang in an operation code-named Angler after keeping watch on the premises in Kingfisher Road. Worcester Crown Court heard up to £1,500 a day was taken for crack cocaine and heroin.

A market trader, said to be the mastermind, was jailed for eight years. Judge John Cavell is also recommending Roan Francis, aged 34, of Caldmore Road, Walsall, is deported.

Judge Cavell said Francis, a father of five, was the "lynchpin" of the operation.

Francis and David Scott, aged 28, of Brampton Road, Hereford, were convicted of conspiracy to supply drugs after an 11-day trial. Scott was jailed for five years.

Kelly Nugent, aged 22, of Ridgemoor Road, Leominster, and Carl Bennett, 33, of Kingfisher Road, Hereford, pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Nugent was jailed for four years and Bennett for three and a half.

Pardeep Tiwana, prosecuting, said Francis and Nugent, his driver in fetching the drugs, thought a flat in quiet Hereford an ideal location for a major drug-dealing ring.

Bennett provided the flat and Scott helped collect cash from customers. The court heard the flat was protected by CCTV.

Miss Kate Bex, for Francis, said most of the customers were already drug users so none had been corrupted. He had been a model prisoner on remand, taking a parenting course.

Nugent had a young daughter and had been living in a refuge because of domestic violence, said Neil Montaldo, defending. While in prison, she had been studying A-level history and psychology.

Mr Montaldo said Bennett had received no financial benefit and endured the stigma in prison of having given evidence for the prosecution.

Scott was the sole carer for his ailing father, said his barrister, James Dunstan. He had worked as a union representative but lost his job when a local firm went out of business. Redundant at 24, he started using drugs and his only benefit from the conspiracy was some drugs for his own consumption.