A DEVIZES doctor's practice has been left more than £90,000 worse off after thieving practice manager Carolanne Spence was ordered to pay back just £100.

Spence, 47, who in November was jailed for 20 months but could walk free next week, was last week told by Swindon Crown Court that she would only have to pay back a nominal figure of £100 within the next 28 days or face a week being added to her sentence.

At her sentencing the court was told she had benefitted to the tune of £90,539.57p while she was practice manager at Lansdowne Surgery, Devizes, and this had meant that the four partners at the surgery had to take pay cuts while other staff did not get the raises they deserved.

A victim impact statement said it also meant they were not able to finance development of the surgery adding: "Some of the money would have been spent on improving services for patients."

On Friday Cathy Thornton, defending, said: "It is regrettable her realisable property is some handbags and shoes that have been valued at £100."

She said her client could be freed on home detention curfew on April 23 meaning she will serve just over a quarter of the sentence behind bars.

Spence, of Dummer Way, Chippenham, started at the surgery in 2007. Between 2010 and 2014 she made scores of bank transfers to herself, her partner and her son, and even awarded herself six extra pay rises in four years.

And she abused her position to hide her crime from the practice's accountants by marking the transactions down as payments for drugs.

When she was confronted about what she had been doing she said she had only taken a fraction of the amount stolen.

Miss Squire, prosecuting, told an earlier hearing the practice, which had four GPs, 19 other members of staff and 7,700 patients, was effectively run by the defendant.

In the summer of 2014 the accountant was concerned about the finances of the surgery.

Bank statements showed payments marked as drug expenditure had actually gone to Spence's account, or those of her partner, Philip Clifford and son Lewis Spence.

She was called in to work and spoken to where she admitted she had taken in the region of £12,000 which she said she would pay back if the police were not involved.

However when the books were looked at properly it was found that between the start of May 2010 and June 10, 2014, she took £85,000 in 175 payments.

Miss Squire said that money was being moved two or three times a month from small sums of £63 to larger amounts up to £753.

And during the same period, while she was given two pay rises, she awarded herself six more, meaning she got another £21,000 she wasn't authorised to receive.

Miss Squire said the money had been used for day to day expenses giving 'a general uplift in living standards' and funding her son going to university.

After the original hearing the surgery said in a statement: "We look forward to moving on from this difficult time and would like to assure our patients that at no point has the care they receive been compromised as a result of these crimes."