Thousands more phone lines selling illegal drugs have been detected by police in the past year, a threat assessment has shown.

The number of drugs county lines running in the UK has risen by more than 50 per cent, data from the National Police Chiefs’ Council suggests.

Figures showed that 6,644 lines were detected by police in 2023-24, up from 4,007 the previous year.

The NPCC said the rise in the number of lines is partly due to improvements in reporting.

County Lines Intensification Week
A Cleveland Police officer on patrol during County Lines Intensification Week in March (Cleveland Police/PA)

Officers have also reported seeing more social media accounts advertising illegal drugs, offering substances such as cannabis, MDMA, LSD, crystal meth and ketamine.

The rise comes amid a wider picture of increasing global cocaine production, and concerns over the threat to the UK of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which has been linked to a sharp rise in drug deaths in the US.

While the number of county lines has gone up, the number of criminal gangs running them has remained steady at 1,447 in 2023-24, the NPCC said.

County lines networks are typically urban-based, drug dealing gangs that use phone lines to sell drugs, mainly crack cocaine and heroin, to customers in other counties.

But, in the year to March 2024, figures suggested this is changing, with the number of lines run across police force boundaries falling by 12.2 percent, and the number run within one force rising by 232 per cent.

Police say the main areas that export lines are London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, with more than 501 lines each recorded in Liverpool and London, and Birmingham and Manchester between 210 and 500 each.

The main forces where the drugs were sold to customers were Cheshire, Scotland, Kent, Essex and Cambridgeshire, the NPCC said.