A LETTING agent discovered a ‘professional’ cannabis farm set up in the home of a kick-boxing champion.

Channel 5’s Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords went behind the scenes into the life of private renting once again ­— at Paul Ainsworth-Lord’s Darwen-based business.

In the latest episode, Mr Ainsworth-Lord, of Ainsworth Lord Estates, was told tenant Lee Cox had not paid rent to his landlord for four months and owed in the region of £4,000.

Mr Ainsworth-Lord visited the house and discovered the locks had been changed to hardened anti-social locks which took 30 minutes to drill into.

Mr Ainsworth-Lord said: “We were not sure what the state of play was.

“We’ve been trying to get Lee for a good while.”

After discovering cannabis-growing equipment in a storage container in the garden, Mr Ainsworth-Lord found a large cannabis set-up inside the loft, with air pipes and the electric system had been bypassed.

Speaking on the programme, Mr Ainsworth-Lord said: “It’s clean, tidy, neat, the whole thing is like a professional outfit.

“It’s got a complete irrigation system. They’re all beautiful and green, it’s a shame it is what it is.

“This is the very reason this house was secured up. A lot of thought has gone into this. This is all black market money.”

After initially thinking the house was empty, viewers see a man hiding in one of the bedrooms leave the house.

Mr Ainsworth-Lord called the police and were told Mr Cox was serving time in prison, which prompted doubts over his involvement in the cannabis set up.

Mr Cox was then released from prison and visited by the letting agent to discuss his future in the house.

When asked if he had any involvement, Mr Cox said: “I don’t know, there were a lot of people in the house weren’t there?

“Nothing to do with me, I didn’t know anything about it.

“I was in prison.”

As it was unclear who was responsible for the farm, the police decide to take no further action and Mr Ainsworth-Lord agrees for Mr Cox to stay in the house.

He said: “When the question of should we let Lee move back cropped up, my initial reaction was ‘can he hell’.

“Then you sleep on things for a day or two and he had been with us for a long time.

“We’ve never had any problems with him.

“If he hadn’t been away this would have never had happened.”

In the previous episode, Mr Ainsworth-Lord was also involved with discovering the remains of a cannabis farm.

He received a call from a property owner enquiring about putting a house on the market.

Mr Ainsworth visited the house in Darwen and found, as well as furniture thrown everywhere, the remains of a large cannabis set up in one of the bedrooms.

One nearby neighbour said: “It’s been empty 12 months.

“My neighbour said they saw someone drill through the lock and phoned the police because they thought the house was being robbed.

“Well it was being robbed because two geezers with a white van came out with black bags full of drugs.

“The police turned up and caught two people running away from the property.

“You can smell it through the wall."