A CAKE maker who used a worker's child maintenance money to prop up the business has been fined more than £5,000.

Barbara Heath, 52, a partner and book-keeper in Buckfastleigh-based Auntie's Handmade Cakes, made 142 weekly deductions from baker Shawn Fell's pay packet for his child support.

But instead of passing it on to the Child Support Agency, it propped up the business for three years. It has since closed.

Heath, from Kingston Close, Kingskerswell, was sentenced by Torbay magistrates to 150 hours unpaid work and ordered to pay £4.084 compensation and £300 costs.

She pleaded guilty to fraud in acting against Mr Fells and dishonestly abusing her position as a partner in the business.

Martin Symonds, prosecutor for the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission, said that Mr Fells owed £8,002.55 to the agency.

But investigations found that only £3,918 had been paid up.

"It meant that £4,084.06 was unaccounted for.

"Investigators visited the proprietor and she accepted that she had taken the money from Mr Fells but had failed to pass it on to the Child Support Agency.

"The CSA made a visit to Mr Fells and he confirmed that sums of money had been deducted from his pay."

The court heard that the fraud took place from August 2006 until June 2009.

In mitigation, solicitor Richard Porritt said: "You have never met a more contrite or remorseful defendant before you in the courts."

He said that Heath had not taken any money from the business.

Speaking after the case a spokesman for the Child Support Agency said: "Tens of thousands of children depend on regular maintenance payment deducted for salaries.

"Unscrupulous employers who deduct the money and then keep it themselves are cheating both the children and the parents."