A cleaner who stole from a tips jar at a bookies claims he did so in desperation to feed his family.

Gary Beer, from Dover, emptied the container at Jennings Bet in Sandgate Road, Folkestone when the shop was closed.

The 27-year-old told a court he had been left short of cash after wrongly believing he would be paid weekly, when it was in fact monthly.

He was rumbled when staff turned up the next day and realised the £34 was missing.

Beer, who came off Universal Credit to start his new job, was spotted on CCTV in the room where it had been kept, which he was not supposed to enter.

He was captured rummaging through cupboards before finding the staff's tips jar and emptying it into a black sack.

The matter was reported to police and Beer's boss at Capital Cleaning Supplies, who gave staff at the shop £100 for the loss of the cash.

Beer was fired from the cleaning company immediately and told to return the shop keys.

However, he told his boss he would not be able to return them until after the weekend, so his boss had to pay another £130 to have the locks changed at the shop.

Beer, of Leyburne Road, was later arrested and charged with theft by employee .

He admitted the offence when he appeared before Margate magistrates on Thursday.

Dylan Bradshaw, prosecuting, told the court the money was stolen on March 4 last year.

He added Beer was co-operative with the police and told them "he'd not been paid and took the tips jar as payment".

The bench heard Beer had a previous conviction for theft from a dwelling in 2014, and had also been given a community order for driving while disqualified in 2019.

He was, however, in breach of the community order as he has not completed his unpaid work requirement.

Magistrates were told he had a partner and three children to provide for and that the misunderstanding over when he would be paid had led him to take the cash on the spur of the moment as his family were desperate for food.

The bench were also told there was only £34 in the jar and that Beer had made a grave error that day, but did so because he had realised he was not going to get wages for a whole month.

The court heard he has now managed to get another job with an agency cleaning and as a result had not completed all of his unpaid work requirement on his previous order, and had 26 hours of unpaid work to complete.

Magistrates decided to extend his community order by six months and added another 10 hours of unpaid work.

He was also placed on another 12-month community order for the theft offence, which will see him complete 25 rehabilitation sessions with probation and carry out another 40 hours of unpaid work.

Beer was also ordered to pay his former boss at the cleaning company £230 compensation.