A man has avoided being sent to jail by repaying lenders the thousands of pounds of debt he owed.

Roger Baker, a 63 year-old demolition contractor, was in almost £150,000 debt when he was declared bankrupt. He managed to get over £52,000 in credit without telling the lenders that his company had gone bust.

Baker was sentenced in Exeter Crown Court and given a 12 month prison sentence, suspended for two years, as well as 160 hours of unpaid community service. Judge Paul Darlow remarked in court: "I made a promise that if you repaid the money you would not go to prison and I am not going behind that. You have kept your end of the bargain and I will keep mine. However, your previous convictions, in addition to the current ones, mean that even outside the two-year period of the suspended sentence the consequences of further offending might be inevitable and within that two years don't bother to think about what will happen."