A BASINGSTOKE mother has avoided jail after stealing thousands of pounds raised for charity by her school.

Gemma Allen, 31, pocketed more than £3,000 from discos and coffee mornings as treasurer of the parent teacher association at Manor Field Infant School in Haydn Road, Brighton Hill, Basingstoke, a court heard.

The mother-of-three, of Merton Road, South View, Basingstoke, cried in the dock at Winchester Crown Court on Friday last week as she was handed a community order for what the judge described as an “important breach of trust”.

Then known as Gemma Temple-Nidd, she stashed £3,278 raised over four years for charities including Macmillan Cancer Care, keeping it in a box under her bed, Winchester Crown Court heard.

She pleaded guilty to 14 counts of theft between 2010 and 2014, as well as forging a bank statement to cover her tracks.

Kerry Maylin, for the prosecution, said: “It’s right to say that when she was finally confronted by the headteacher ... Ms Allen made a conscious decision to try and avoid detection by searching the internet for a letter head or logo for the HSBC bank and made a fake, fraudulent bank statement to try and cover the fact she had not banked any of the money.”

The exact sums stolen could not be verified, Ms Maylin added.

Allen’s lawyer said she spent £290 of the stolen cash and had already repaid the rest.

Sentencing, Judge Keith Cutler QC said: “You really did get yourself into a complete mess, and I’ve got a distinct picture that for many months if not for many years, you were lying awake at night in the bed, on top of the money, and you didn’t know what on earth you should do with it, unable to share with anyone, including your husband, your family, the complete mess you were getting in.”

He said she would “suffer the shame of this coming out, shaming yourself and your family because you have been found guilty of what, on the face of it, was an important breach of trust to misuse monies which you should have banked.”

The judge added that, despite a previous conviction for pocketing false refunds as a teenage shop worker, Allen was of “good character”.

She was ordered to repay the remaining £290 in stolen cash and given an 18-month supervised community order with 150 hours of unpaid work.

Allen changed her name after the deception came to light, the court heard. She has since opened a laundry business.