A COUPLE who turned their rented flat at an exclusive address into a drugs den have been evicted.

The pair were the first this year to be kicked out of a privately-owned home in Nottingham under a Crack House Closure Order.

District Judge Mervyn Harris, sitting at Nottingham Magistrates' Court, imposed the order on the property in The Ropewalk after hearing how heroin and a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine were found there by police.

The order means the property is boarded up and it is illegal to remain in or enter it for three months. Tenants Emily Moore and Zahoor Hussain have been evicted.

The pair were said to be responsible for relentless antisocial behaviour and District Judge Harris was satisfied the flat was being used for taking and dealing in Class A drugs.

Moore, 26, and her partner Hussain, 43, who were tenants of the flat on the edge of The Park estate, had made their neighbours' lives a misery since December last year, not long after they moved in.

Neighbours were regularly unable to sleep because of the loud noise visitors would make in the early hours. They began to live in fear of visitors who constantly buzzed the communal intercom, shouted and argued, knocked loudly, banged doors and visited late at night in cars beeping their horns.

Smoke could be smelled from outside the apartment and residents believed the odour to be that of drugs.

According to the beat manager for The Park, PC Ian Taylor, there had been a sharp increase in crime in the area, particularly thefts from cars.

Moore repeatedly ignored warnings from police and the private landlord.

Notts Police searched Moore and Hussain's flat on July 7, and recovered a wrap of heroin in a bedroom.

They also found burned tin foil and a pipe for smoking crack cocaine.

Richard Antcliff, Notts Police's head of neighbourhood enforcement, said: "We will now continue to work with and support the landlord to secure eviction and ensure these people are not re-housed by the city council or other registered social landlords.

"We will attempt to exclude these people from the area but wherever they turn up, we will be waiting and watching.

"It is extremely difficult for witnesses in these situations to come forward and speak up, we need to recognise their courage and I personally thank them for this."

Notts police say only "a handful" of Crack House Closure Orders had been issued for privately-owned homes in the city.

Moore has been the subject of a drug rehabilitation order under which she should have visited probation officers twice a week. She failed to attend any of the appointments made.