A Wiltshire councillor who cheated a pension fund of almost £50,000 has been jailed for ten months.

Philip Brown plundered more than £12,000 in cash which he used to pay his maxed-out credit cards.

And the 60-year-old also failed to collect in excess of £35,000 in rent from struggling tenants at an enterprise park owned by the fund.

Brown, of Berhills Lane, Rowde, Devizes, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and three of theft when he appeared before a judge at Swindon Crown Court. The four charges amount to a total misappropriation of £47,764.88.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told the court how the Old Dairy Exempt Property Unit Trust was a pension fund for five trustees. He said it owned the Avonside Enterprise Park in Melksham which had about 40 business units rented out to tenants.

He said that in 2005 one of the trustees, who had acted as the administrator, was spending time abroad so Brown, was appointed to replace him.

The job included ensuring rent was collected from the the business units and keeping the trust’s books.

Mr Meeke said Brown’s predecessor had arranged for a quarterly independent audit of the accounts. But Brown convinced other trustees it was an unnecessary waste of money and cancelled it.

The first anyone knew of a problem was when a note was found from a tenant who thanked Brown for not chasing them for unpaid rent.

He was confronted and admitted he had been failing to collect rent and also siphoning money for himself.

Mr Meeke said one of the companies which had not been paying had gone bust and another was in administration meaning the trust had lost more than £35,000.

He said that while the offending was going on in the two years to early 2009 the defendant’s personal finances were ‘in a mess’ .

Virginia Cornwall, defending, said Brown had not gained personally from the fraud as he hoped the struggling companies would ultimately be able to pay the rent.

When he started to steal for himself, she said it was out of desperation because of his financial problems.

Jailing Brown, who has resigned as a Tory councillor, Judge Euan Ambrose ordered he pay £13,603.53, representing the sum he stole plus interest in six months, or face a further eight months’ in prison.

He also told him to pay £35,000 in compensation over the next 18 months.