The former owner of a Bradford city centre opticians walked from Court yesterday after a judge decided he could just avoid jailing him for an NHS fiddle.

Stephen Penrose had been locked up overnight while Judge Peter Benson considered his sentence after he pleaded guilty to four charges of conspiracy to commit false accounting.

Over a period of two-and-a-half years in the mid-1990s, 43-year-old Penrose, who ran the Crown Optical Centre in Ivegate, submitted false claims to the NHS for glasses he had never supplied to customers or higher-priced spectacles such as those with tinted lenses.

Penrose accepted he had dishonestly obtained a total sum of £5,830.70 but he claimed he was only using the money to offset losses in the business.

Bradford Crown Court heard on Thursday that Penrose, who has since qualified to work as an ophthalmologist, still faced a hearing before the General Medical Council as a result of his offending.

Judge Benson told him: "In order to operate this deception you needed the help of your employees. Three of them were originally arrested. Two originally appeared on the indictment with you. They have been dealt with by way of cautions."

Judge Benson described the involvement of the staff as an aggravating feature but noted that he had also read a large number of references which spoke of Penrose's "glowing qualities".

Judge Benson said he had thought it would be inevitable that Penrose would be sent to custody for such a breach of trust, but he had just decided to impose a community punishment order for 200 hours.

He noted the lengthy inquiry had had an impact on Penrose's family and that he had done voluntary work assisting people in the developing world since the offences were committed.

Penrose, who now lives in Parkgate Row, Copster Green, Blackburn, and had no previous convictions, has already arranged for the money he obtained to be paid back to the Bradford Health Authority.

During Thursday's hearing barrister Derek Duffy, for Penrose, stressed his offending was not the result of greed or personal enrichment. He claimed the business losses were the result of Penrose supplying certain spectacles to people who could not afford the full price and the cost of repeatedly replacing glasses for children who had broken them.