A former bar steward at a working men's club has been ordered to do 80 hours community service after £4,000 went missing from its accounts.

Alan Gibson, 46, said he did not have a clue where the money had gone when police investigated discrepancies at Bingley Working Men's Club.

Gibson, who had been working at the club for more than four years, was sentenced at Bradford Crown Court after he admitted charges of false accounting.

Prosecutor Colin Harvey said that when he was questioned Gibson said the money from bar takings had evaporated.

"He accepted full responsibility for the evaporation of the money but he was not for saying that he had taken it himself. He didn't have a clue where it had gone.''

Mr Harvey said the club was seeking a compensation order of £4,000, but Judge Roger Scott declined to make it because Gibson did not have the money to pay it. He did order Gibson, of Damens Lane, Keighley, to pay £250 towards the costs of the case.