Firefighters attending a flat fire stumbled across a cannabis farm.

Crews from Preston Circus forced their way into a flat in Lewes Road, Brighton, to tackle a blaze to find two rooms turned into a cannabis factory.

A neighbour alerted the emergency services at 9.40pm last night after seeing smoke coming out of a window.

Firefighters said that the blaze started with an electrical fault in some of the equipment used to turn the flat into a small-scale drug factory.

Fire crews wearing breathing apparatus and using a hose reel put out the fire in an incident which took them about one hour and 20 minutes to resolve.

Sussex Police officers remain at the scene this morning.

One firefighter told The Argus: “We forced our way into the flat to find two of the rooms converted to grow cannabis plants.

“The two rooms were about half full with these plants.

“The floorboards and part of the wall were very badly damaged and some of the plants.

“There was a very strong smell both inside and outside the flat.”