HEROIN was for sale at two adjoining houses in a street where one dealer poached his neighbour's customers, a court was told yesterday.

Two undercover police officers targeting a Redcar house faced efforts to tempt them away by a dealer next door, said Shaun Dodds, prosecuting.

Stephen McLoughlin, 26, shouted from an upstairs window then removed a barricade from his front door. He took them into his flat where he sold them two wraps of heroin for £15.

They returned days later to buy more, Teesside Crown Court was told. Four months later the officers arrested him.

McLoughlin said he had been ordered to sell heroin because he was in debt.

Tony Calloway, defending, said McLoughlin pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

McLoughlin, of Westbourne Grove, Redcar, was jailed for four years after admitting three charges of supplying heroin in April and May last year.

His female next-door neighbour was jailed for four years earlier this week after she admitted similar offences.

Judge Fox promised the people of Redcar that the resort's heroin problem would he solved and imposed a three and a half years youth custody sentence on Stephen Taylor, 20, who lived in the same house.

Taylor, who was caught by the same undercover officers, pleaded guilty to three charges of supplying them with heroin.