A getaway driver has been jailed for 21 months for a raid on a Sikh temple in which a safe containing cash was stolen.

Eleazar Allert waited outside while two others ransacked worship halls in the Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara in Gravesend and fled with £2,000.

Maidstone Crown Court heard a ground-floor window was smashed just after midnight on June 24 last year.

A crowbar was then used to force open a door to the cash office before the heavy safe was wheeled away on a trolley.

The intruders entered three halls of worship within the £15 million building - the largest Sikh temple in Europe - which was visited by former Prime Minister David Cameron during his election campaign two years ago.

Donation boxes containing “significant” amounts of money were emptied and left nearby.

Seven people, including priests, were living at the Saddington Street temple but were oblivious to the break-in, which was discovered by a cleaner shortly before 4am.

By then trainee electrician Allert, 27, had already been arrested after a police dog handler spotted his Vauxhall Astra just before 2am.

"The invasion of that place, albeit at night, was very serious" - Judge Jeremy Carey

After a 10 minute chase, he drove into a dead-end in Halling, near Rochester, and was cornered by the dog and bitten.

The two other burglars fled across wasteland. The safe still containing the cash was in the back of the car.

Allert, of Myrtle Road, Walthamstow, east London, was said to have worked as a stagehand at Wembley Stadium assisting bands such as Coldplay.

Prosecutor Iestyn Morgan said the crime had a serious impact on the temple, with religious ceremonies having to be cancelled.

Judge Jeremy Carey described the organised and pre-planned raid as “an invasion”.

“The Gurdwara is a well-known place of worship, and a place revered by those Sikhs and others who enter there,” he said.

“It is a place where people go for spiritual succour and guidance, where they go for community refreshment, for sustenance both spiritual and material, and where they expect to be safe and at peace, and where the atmosphere will be one consistent with all the well-known principles of the Sikh religion.

“So the invasion of that place, albeit at night, was very serious.”

He told Allert, who admitted burglary: “You were the getaway driver and the look-out. You played an important role because it was well-known there would be a safe which would have to be transported.”

The court heard the donation money was not recovered, but police have since confirmed it was found.

Leeroy Reynolds, 34, of Goddard Way, Ilford, Essex, has denied burgling the temple and will stand trial next month.