A £400-a-month parish council clerk who pocketed £86,000 from taxpayers will repay just £1.

Crooked Gary Willard, 53, from Tenterden, is serving a three-year jail sentence after stealing the money from Rolvenden Parish Council.

He used it to splash out on computers, a camera and a projector.

But after inquiries under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the devious clerk was found to have no assets to repay the money.

Judge Martin Huseyin was then forced to order a nominal £1 or serve one day more on his sentence.

Willard, of Caxton Close, Tenterden, had syphoned off the money from Rolvenden Parish Council's bank accounts, where he worked between May 2016 and November 2017.

The part-time clerk and finance officer deceived two other councillors by hiding a critical page of a bank mandate which had enabled him to poach money from the council avoiding scrutiny.

After persuading colleagues to switch payments to online banking he began transferring the parish council's money to his own account, even setting up direct debits to pay for personal bills.

He was finally caught out in November 2017 when he attempted to present incomplete annual accounts to an independent auditor and it was discovered he had completely drained all three of the council’s bank accounts.

A Kent Police investigation showed Willard had stolen a total of £83,272, using the money to pay rent on a business premises and to purchase electrical items for personal use.

He said that he was in debt and stole to help provide for a relative with learning difficulties and offered to repay the money from his £400-a-month salary.

Willard pleaded to fraud by abuse of position and was sent to prison in September last year.

Judge Huseyin was told that a forensic examination of Willard's assets had shown he couldn't pay anything back.

After he was sentenced, DC Geoff Kirya of the serious economic crime unit said: "The actions of Gary Willard will have a profound and lasting impact not just on the parish council, but upon the communities that they serve."

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