By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 13:54, Thursday, 13 November 2008

The manager of a west Cumbrian health centre admitted that her deputy was never told that she had failed in a bid to be recognised as a partner in the practice.

Innocent: Sandra Lancaster of Seaton

Julie Harris told a jury at Carlisle Crown Court that, while her application to become a partner had been approved, nobody had bothered to tell her assistant Sandra Lancaster that hers had not.

Mrs Harris said that she and Lancaster – a long-time friend – had both wanted to become partners in the Ann Burrows Thomas Health Centre in South William Street, Workington.

But, after their applications were considered by the other partners in April 2004, only she, Mrs Harris, was successful.

Mrs Harris said she had not told Lancaster that her application had been refused, and as far as she knew none of the other partners had either. “There was no discussion either way,” she said.

Lancaster, of Seaton, has pleaded not guilty to seven charges of false accounting at the practice, which is now known as The Orchard Surgery.

The prosecution claims she “cooked the books” so she could pay herself tens of thousands of pounds more than she was entitled to.

Among other things, it is alleged, she awarded herself overtime payments for hours she could not have worked, paid herself a higher hourly rate than she was entitled to, and for no good reason paid herself lump sums totalling well over £10,000.

At one time, it is said, she was taking home more than some of the doctors.

Prosecuting barrister Michael Scholes has suggested that she might have committed the fraud out of anger after her application for a partnership was refused while Mrs Harris’s was approved.

The court heard that in repeated interviews with the police Lancaster said all the overtime she had claimed had been approved by Mrs Harris and that all payments she had received had been authorised by the partners.

She claimed to the police that Mrs Harris was “pulling the wool over the eyes of the doctors” by being involved in “various types of dishonesty, fiddling the accounts and falsifying documents”.

The trial continues.

First published at 11:26, Thursday, 13 November 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk