THE wife of an Army colonel accused of claiming nearly £100,000 in allowance to send his children to one of the leading public schools in Britain spent more time at her family home than in military accommodation, a telecommunications expert told a court martial.

Peter Brown analysed the outgoing data of the mobile phones of Colonel Roddy Lee, who worked at the Army Headquarters in Andover, and his wife Juliet to see whether they were near their home in Devizes, Wiltshire, or close to RAF Odiham when the devices were used.

Mr Brown said the most regular location for Col Lee's device to connect with a phone mast was in the Devizes area with 16 per cent of data, while a mast near the RAF base was second with 13 per cent.

Meanwhile, an examination of junior doctor Mrs Lee's phone showed that 31 per cent of outgoing voice and text messages were made in the Devizes area.

The second most popular location was in the Salisbury area where she worked with six per cent. The RAF Odiham area was 3.5 per cent.

"We don't know from the data records who had the phone and neither does it tell us the precise location where the phone was," Mr Brown told the court martial in Bulford.

"All we can say is that it was in the area of a cell site which may be in the vicinity of an address."

The court heard the communications company which produced the information about Col Lee's phone did not supply any GPRS data - logged when the device connects to the internet - or details of incoming calls.

Mr Brown explained he also attempted to plot the locations of where the last piece of data each day was made and the first of the following day - to try and guess where Col Lee may have slept overnight.

"With the limited number of calls available for examination it struck me that in my opinion it was fairly evenly balanced in between Devizes and Odiham in the overall period," he said.

Having done the same analysis for Mrs Lee, the expert said: "I think I added it up correctly there were 93 days and nights at the West Lavington site and 15 occasions when it was in Odiham."

Under cross-examination, Mr Brown accepted that without the incoming call data there was an "incomplete picture".

"It limits, perhaps, conclusions that one might draw," he said.

He also said that if the phone was switched off it would not generate any data.

"I have assumed if the phone was there in the evening it probably stayed overnight and was there in the morning. It is an assumption," he said.

Fiona Edington, representing Col Lee, asked Mr Brown whether he had made a distinction in his report between Col Lee being at RAF Odiham during the week and at Devizes at weekends.

"I have not differentiated between the working day and the weekend," he said.

Miss Edington asked: "Is it fair to say that the absence of incoming call data and the landline data means the conclusions are limited?"

Mr Brown replied: "They are limited to the data we have.

"There are many days in this period it is not possible to give any meaningful conclusions about the location of the person, apart from Dr Lee's phone predominately in the Devizes area."

To receive the Army's continuity of education allowance (CEA), Mrs Lee had to live with her husband in his service accommodation but prosecutors allege she in fact lived at their Wiltshire property.

During the academic year 2015/16, Col Lee claimed £98,306.80 in fees to send his two elder children to Marlborough College and his two youngest children to prep schools in Wiltshire and Dorset.

The allowance enables service personnel to send their children to boarding school to prevent disruption to schooling caused by postings around the UK and abroad.

Col Lee, late of the Royal Artillery, denies three charges of fraud alleged to have occurred between May 2015 and October 16.