A man who fraudulently claimed he was earning £40,000 a year to get mortgages for two properties, has been jailed.

Timothy Cockerill, 31, pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining money by deception.

Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that Cockerill, of Tenbury Road, Wrose, Shipley, falsely claimed he was a car trader on mortgage applications for the properties.

The first application was for a £70,500 mortgage loan from Birmingham Midshires, part of HBOS, for an £83,000 house in Wharncliffe Drive, Eccleshill, in November 2004. The application was granted and the loan repaid in months.

The second false claim, in January 2007, with Kensington Mortgage Company, was for a £110,000 loan to purchase a property in Wellington Grove, Undercliffe. Cockerill was continuing to pay that back by agreement with the financial company.

Jailing him for 14 months, Judge John Potter told him: “You deliberately inflated your level of earnings to obtain loans to purchase properties which you otherwise would not have been able to obtain.

“Mortgage fraud is a serious offence. You were happy to indulge yourself ... acting dishonestly to obtain large sums of money to which you were not, in law, entitled.”