AN assistant at a New Forest campsite looted the safe of his employers before cycling away with the cash.

Nicholas Hall, 41, who lived in a tent at the Hollands Wood site near Brockenhurst, returned to the office late at night and disconnected the alarm before opening the safe and taking the contents, Southampton Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Tim Compton said that the theft was discovered the following morning before a security company arrived to collect the takings.

Hall did not turn up for work and the bags containing the money were found in his empty tent.

In the meantime he had cycled to the local railway station where he caught the first train. He surrendered himself to Bournemouth police after they had sent him an e-mail.

He told detectives that after his daughter had died six years ago from leukaemia he had raised money for the Make A Wish charity and had given £6,000 of the £8,300 he had stolen to a couple whose daughter was seriously ill.

However, he declined to name them. The rest he had spent on himself.

Mr Compton commented: "Quite bluntly, the prosecution would like to make it clear that assertions of this kind are not accepted until there is proof to back up his claim.”

Hall, of Francis Road, Bournemouth, had been committed for sentence after admitting theft from the Camping and Caravan Club and failing to surrender to bail on his first appearance at the magistrates court.

Giving him an eight-month suspended sentence coupled with an order to do 180 hours of community service, Judge Nicholas Rowland said Hall had blatantly stolen the money.

In mitigation, Richard Martin said: “He is obviously a complicated individual and has struggled.

"Supervision is what he needs. He doesn’t think through his problems and it was an offence he couldn’t have possibly got away with.”