Port Talbot: GP surgery manager who stole more than £300,000 from business gets prison sentence

Clare Boland paid herself thousands of pounds a month on top of her £53,000 salary with the money being disguised as being payments to a locum doctor. Credit: Media Wales

A manager of a GP surgery in Port Talbot who stole more than £320,000 from the business has been jailed.

As practice manager at Fairfield surgery Clare Boland, 51, paid herself thousands of pounds a month on top of her £53,000 salary, disguising the fraud as payments to a locum doctor.

Swansea Crown Court heard Boland's fraudulent actions went on for more than four years. Peter Donnison, prosecuting, said: "Ms Boland began working at the Fairfield surgery in Port Talbot, a GP centre with more than 800 patients on its books, in 2009.

"At the time of the fraud the defendant was practice manager, a role which meant she had sole responsibility for the surgery's finances including organising payment to doctors and staff and paying bills and expenses."The court heard how the fraud was uncovered in February 2022 when a doctor at the surgery noticed a payment of £9,000 had been paid to a locum doctor who had only worked once a week at the surgery some years previously.

When the payroll company was alerted, it emerged that regular payments in the sums of thousands of pounds had been made to that same account since August 2017.

The bank account belonged to Boland and it was uncovered that a total of £324,706.85 had been paid into it between August 2017 and February 2022.

The prosecutor added that when partners at the surgery spoke her about the payments, Boland told them it was an administrative error and the payments should have been recorded as going to HMRC instead.

The court heard she was suspended from work in March 2022 and invited to a number of meetings to discuss the situation but declined to attend saying she was unwell. She was later arrested at her home.

The prosecutor said the theft of the money has put the surgery at "substantial financial risk", left staff "devastated" and had a "significant emotional impact" on the two partners in the practice.

Boland was arrested after it was discovered more than £320,000 of payments had been made into her bank account over a four year period. Credit: South Wales Police

Sentencing her to three years, Judge Catherine Richard said she had taken into account Boland's guilty plea and the "significant impact" it would have on her child.

Boland will serve up to half that period in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.

A proceeds of crime investigation will now be carried out into Boland's finances.

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