A CANNABIS factory was discovered in the loft of a house when police officers noticed there was no snow on the roof.

Wayne Daniels, of Littleworth, near Wheatley, was caught with more than £9,500 of the Class B drug growing in the top two floors of his home.

He was described in court as a “one man band” who ran the growing operation himself, partly to fund his own long-term cannabis habit.

Now the 41-year-old has been jailed for two years after admitting one count of producing cannabis between January 2011 and March 2011.

Some 963g of the drug was found in the house.

Officers became suspicious of his terraced property during March 2011 after a heavy snow fall, because it was the only house in its row without snow on the roof.

They searched the house and found 24 immature plants and 36 non-flowering plants, along with heat lights and hydroponic growing equipment.

Thames Valley Police experts estimated the annual yield from the crop could have produced as much as 2.89kg of cannabis, with a street value of £29,000.

Daniels was due to report to magistrates in March last year but went on the run and missed three appointments, until he was arrested on January 13 this year.

Ian Jobling, defending, said it was more of a cannabis “enterprise” than a fully-fledged factory.

He said: “The reality was he didn’t think he was very good at it and the plants did not appear to be growing very well.

“By the time the police started investigating he had already decided it wasn’t a good idea.

“He has been a high cannabis user for most of his life.”

Mr Jobling added that it had been an unsophisticated “corner shop operation”.

He said: “He was caught because it had snowed, but there wasn’t any snow on the roof of his house, which was particularly suspicious.”

The court heard that Daniels has a total of 21 convictions, including for drug offences, dating back to 1987.

Sentencing him yesterday in Oxford Crown Court Judge Mary Jane Mowat said she had no choice but to send him to jail.

She said: “You were not the most successful grower on earth. However, this was a commercial enterprise.

“The potential annual value was about £29,000, which is not negligible.

“You have something of a career, unfortunately, of drug dealing.”