A dad has been given a dressing down after drugs were found at the Dover home he shares with his nine-year-old child.

Brian Phipps, 33, was with his son when police raided the property in East Cliffe and discovered cannabis, cocaine and an ecstasy-like substance worth up to £12,000.

Judge James O’Mahony told him: “You have the responsibility for a nine-year-old son. It is your duty to be a role model and that that doesn’t mean having drugs in the home he is living in!”

Prosecutor Dominic Connolly told Canterbury Crown Court that officers executed a search warrant at Phipps’ home in July last year.

Also present was Phipp’s nine-year-old son and also a tenant.

When officers arrived, Phipps confirmed he was in possession of herbal cannabis and retrieved it from two plastic boxes on a shelf. Cocaine was also found in his bedroom.

“Officers then searched the basement where they found a brown ammunition box and inside a plastic food container was a white powder, later identified as BZP, a Class C drug sold as an alternative to ecstasy.”

“You have the responsibility for a nine-year-old son. It is your duty to be a role model and that that doesn’t mean having drugs in the home" - Judge James O'Mahony

Phipps, who admitted possessing drugs intending to sell them and a third charge of having a Class C drug, claimed a previous tenant had left the BZP in a shed.

Experts later claimed the drug had a street value of between £9,700 and £11,640.

Police later checked Phipp’s phone and discovered he had been dealing in other drugs “on a commercial basis, offering £10 and £20 amounts,” said Mr Connolly.

He was given a five-month jail sentence suspended for two years, placed under partial house arrest for the next six months and ordered to wear an electronic tag.

Judge O’Mahony told him: “This is a last chance for you. You can’t go on flouting the law quite deliberately, whatever attitude you may have towards drugs.

“The reality is that medical reports show that people taking cannabis, especially the strong variety, suffer from psychosis... including young people, whose brains are really seriously damaged.”