A COUPLE stole more than £53,000 in a desperate attempt to keep their struggling village shop in business, Carlisle Crown Court heard.

Stephen Flower, 53, and his wife Elizabeth, who is 48, had run the post office and convenience store in Elterwater for more than seven years before it hit financial problems in 2005.

Then they started using money from the post office section to subsidise the loss-making convenience store attached to it.

They said later that they only did it out of a sense of duty to their customers who depended on them to go on providing an essential local service.

At Carlisle Crown Court the couple, who live in The Garth, Coniston, pleaded guilty to theft.

The court heard that in the three years before they were caught they had taken a total of £53,682.

Prosecuting counsel Ruth Phillips said the thefts came to light during a routine audit, when the couple were on holiday in August last year.

When interviewed by Post Office investigators on their return they immediately confessed to what they had been doing, she said.

“They said the convenience store business was failing and they had taken money from the post office to pay mounting debts, which they were not able to meet,” she said.

In mitigation, defence solicitor, Chris Evans, said the couple – who had no previous business experience - had been “motivated not by avarice, but by a determination to ensure that they continued to provide a service to the people using a local amenity.”

Of Stephen Flower, he said: “He buried his head in the sand, believing things would get better, but of course they never did.”

The couple were given 12 month prison sentences, suspended for two years, and each made to do 250 hours unpaid community work. They were also each ordered to pay £175 court costs.

Judge Peter Hughes QC told them it was “highly exceptional” not to pass an immediate prison sentence in such a case.

But he added: “Quite plainly this was a store that provided a vital service to the local community but which was no longer viable. I accept that what you did was done not out of any greed or desire to gain personal benefit, but as a desperate act to keep the store trading.”

Both the shop and the post office have now closed.

The money the Flowers took from the post office has been voluntarily repaid by Mrs Judy Fry, who was legally responsible for the loss because she was technically sub postmistress – though “in name only” – throughout the couple’s tenure.

Both the shop and the post office have now closed.