A BURGLAR who squandered a chance given to him by a judge last year has been jailed for three years and eight months.

Alan Aldous was given an opportunity to prove he could go straight when Judge Tim Mousley QC decided to put off passing sentence in September last year.

But within weeks Aldous, 26, had sneaked behind the counter of The Village Hotel in West Swindon and helped himself to cash from the till.

And the month after the Royal Wootton Bassett man smashed a window at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity, in Chippenham, and stole a laptop computer.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that Aldous was given the chance last year despite being a three-strike house burglar: meaning he should get three years.

On that occasion he had broken into a family home stealing numerous items including a charity box raising cash for a hospice where the owner's mum had recently died.

When he appeared before the court last year he told the judge he had bought a laptop, for which he had a receipt, to replace the one he stole.

But Mr Meeke said that never materialised and in the first week of October he was at the hotel chatting to staff in the reception when they left the desk unmanned.

Aldous then took the opportunity to sneak behind the counter and went into the till, helping himself to £35.

The court heard that in late November he broke into the sea life charity in St Paul Street, Chippenham, and took another laptop.

Mr Meeke said he also faced sentence for an offence committed earlier last year when he hired some building plant, which he never returned.

Aldous, of The Lawns, Royal Wootton Bassett, pleaded guilty to burglary and theft and was found guilty of stealing the building equipment by magistrates.

Mike Pulsford, defending, said when he was given the chance he was in work and a relationship but both fell through son after.

"He is honest enough to say that essentially last autumn, late October, early November, he then started a crack cocaine addiction that was, he said, particularly acute.

"He's obviously had drug issues for years and that has been the motivation for the large number of recent offences."

Jailing him Judge Mousley QC said: "On September 9 last year you pleaded guilty to burglary.

"On that occasion there were signs that you had, or were showing signs of changing your ways.

"You were given a chance that day. It was a real opportunity for you and all you had to do was to demonstrate for a period of six months that you had changed you ways.

"There were various conditions on that order: many, if not all of them, have been breached, and here you are four months later.

"Within weeks of your release from here, in the early hours of the morning, you burgled the premises of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity."