A handyman who helped look after a “sophisticated” hidden cannabis factory has been jailed for three years.

Gareth Sheppard, aged 31, of The Crescent, Loughton, pleaded guilty to “being concerned in the production of cannabis” and abstracting electricity at a barn at Woodside Farm, Stapleford Abbotts on July 30 2013.

On Friday (April 15) Chelmsford Crown Court heard that police raided the farm unit and discovered 321 cannabis plants with an estimated yield of 14.4kg, worth up to £144,000.

Electricity worth £24,570 was illegally bypassed.

Recorder Maryam Syed said Sheppard, who has no previous convictions, had been working for someone and was offered a job on the side to earn extra money if he helped with the chemicals and water for the cannabis plants.

He had a key to the outside shutter - not to the inside room where the plants were - but he knew how large the operation was, she added.

She told Sheppard as she sentenced him: “You say they were not very nice people but you don't say you were scared.

“Naively you came on board.”

She described the cannabis factory as “one of the most sophisticated operations police have come across in years”.

Sheppard's co-accused, plumber and heating engineer Paul Souter, 36, of no fixed address, was acquitted by a jury on March 31 after a trial.

Mr Souter had denied both offences.

Both men were stopped by police in Mr Souter's van after they sped off from the farm during the police raid.

Mr Souter told the jury he had lent his van to his friend Sheppard while he was away on holiday and that he knew nothing about the cannabis plants.