A FAMILY-RUN gang which operated a heroin and crack cocaine pipeline have been jailed for a total of more than 20 years.

But the leader of the gang is still at liberty after NHS bureaucratic delays prevented a senior judge from locking him up.

For months, Ethan Wharton, 37, operated a regular transport service buying high purity drugs and cutting agents in Bradford from Kesser Hussain, 24 and organised regular convoys of cars from Hull and Teesside to Bradford to bring heroin and cocaine back to York, a court was told.

The cars were driven by his older brother, Edward, 42, then wife Rosemary Smith, 28, and Simon Hall, 44, of Whitbank Road, Darlington, with possibly other drivers.

In York, Ethan Wharton had the drugs delivered for processing and sale from a drugs flat in Coxwold House in Lowther Street and kept money at the home of his mother, Yasmin Biggs, 62.

Sentencing the gang, the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Roger Thomas QC, said: "This was drug supply on a professional and considerable scale."

His sentences bring the total number of years handed down to gang members to more than 40. Three others were jailed last October.

Ethan Wharton, formerly living with his mother Biggs in Cole Street, and now of Stokesley, North Yorkshire, was found unfit to plead last summer to conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine in 2015 and possession of cocaine with intent to supply in 2014, shortly after he pleaded guilty to having counterfeit money. Doctors have declared he is psychotic.

A jury last month found he had committed both the drugs offences and the judge said he wanted to confine him to a psychiatric hospital. But Wharton's barrister Jessica Strange told him he could only do so if there was a bed available, and NHS managers have yet to say there is.

The judge ordered the NHS trust to provide him with the information he needed.

Ethan Wharton will learn whether he is to be locked up on April 28. Both North Yorkshire Police and the CPS are holding his case open and he may yet face a full trial if he recovers from his mental illness.

Speaking afterwards, Det Con Tim Jackson, of North Yorkshire Police's organised crime unit, said the travelling family-run gang operated across county borders and were brought to justice by several forces, police officers and support staff working together.

"This clearly demonstrates the determination of North Yorkshire Police to keep the scourge of drugs off our streets," he said. "Gang members now have to face the consequences of their criminal behaviour."

Hussain, who sold the drugs from his family home in Kismet Gardens, Bradford, was jailed for nine years. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply drugs and was said to be remorseful for his actions.

Edward Wharton, Smith and Hall denied the conspiracy charge and Biggs denied possessing nearly £3,000 in criminal cash. All four were convicted at trial at Bradford Crown Court last month.

Edward Wharton, of Cole Street, York, was jailed for four and a half years.

Hall, from Darlington, was jailed for seven years. He had previously operated a similar pipeline and his barrister Reginald Bosomworth said he had been pestered by Ethan Wharton for money..

Mother-of-five Smith, of Hewley Avenue, Tang Hall, was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years on condition she does 15 days' rehabilitative activities.

Biggs, who has now moved to a caravan site in Stokesley, where Ethan Wharton now lives, was given a six-month night curfew between 8pm and 7am.

Last October, Shayne Garnett, 48, was jailed for six years and eight months, Craig Dale Laing, 39, for seven, and Shantal Laing, 32, for five and a half years, after all three admitted supplying drugs from their flat in Coxwold House.