Daniel Hughes, 25, ran a heroin and cocaine "factory" in the heart of York, dealing to addicts as often as 30 times a day.

Hughes and an accomplice turned his home in Clarence Street into an underworld business, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecuting, Simon Kealey said when police raided the flat on July 8, they found thousands of pounds-worth of heroin and cocaine, £2,300 in cash, two sets of scales, drug dealer lists, and other drug paraphernalia.

"Your premises represented a factory - a significant factory for the warehouse and preparation of drugs, and from there you were pushing these drugs," the Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told Hughes.

Both the tenant and his accomplice, Graham Michael Maidment, made endless repeated short journeys from the flat to serve their drug-addicted customers.

The judge accepted that Hughes was not the "Mr Big" of the operation. Earlier, after hearing evidence, the judge decided that the drug dealing business ran from the end of April to the end of June 2005.

Hughes, originally of Walton, Liverpool. pleaded guilty to possessing nearly 20g of heroin and 20g of crack cocaine, both with intent to supply them, being concerned in the supply of heroin and cocaine, causing actual bodily harm to a Liverpool busker, and assaulting a Liverpool policeman.

He was on parole from a six-and-a-half year sentence for robberies and a firearms offence at the time.

He was jailed for seven years for the new offences, plus 622 days unserved of the robbery sentence.

Mr Kealey said Hughes launched an unprovoked attack on a busker playing in Liverpool city centre in March, giving him face injuries. He then head-butted a police officer.

Hughes' barrister, Glenn Parsons, said his client had been very drunk in March because of his girlfriend's miscarriage and job problems.

He had then come to York to start a new life as a chef in the tourist city's many restaurants. But he was a long way from home, had financial difficulties and got involved in drugs.

Maidment, of Loudon Grove, Toxteth, Liverpool, will be sentenced later.

Updated: 10:54 Monday, January 23, 2006