A £1,500 tax rebate plunged a recovering heroin user back into addiction, a court heard.

John Pagett had been at the specialist Amber Project recovery centre in Devon for five months when he received the cash windfall.

He had previously served a jail term for offences committed to feed his addiction. He spent £500 of the rebate on clothes with the rest going on heroin, and fell back into crime.

At Swindon Magistrates Court on Monday, unemployed Pagett, 23, of Cherry Tree Grove, admitted stealing £72 of toiletries from the Co-op in Swindon, along with possessing diazepam, a class C drug he obtained illegally in a bid to help him come off heroin.

He was given an 18-month conditional discharge. His solicitor, Nicola Jennings, said the money would have been good news for most people, but added: "All those months of hard work went down the drain because of a tax rebate.

"He went back to the Amber Project to ask if they would have him back, and they said they were sorry but they would not.

"He signed up with Druglink in Swindon and was waiting for a referral when his offending began again."

Prosecutor Richard Thomas said the theft from the Co-op happened on July 3, when a staff member saw him load a trolley with toiletries, walk out without paying and then ride away on a bicycle.

When a CCTV tape was examined by the police afterwards, one officer recognised Pagett.

The police came to his address on Saturday to arrest him, and it was there that they found the diazepam in small cardboard boxes.

Mr Thomas said Pagett agreed that the CCTV images were of him, and told officers he obtained the diazepam from a person he was not prepared to name.

Ms Jennings said Pagett was the subject of a drug treatment and testing order over previous offences by the time he was arrested for the Co-op theft, and appealed top the magistrates to allow him to continue with it.

She added that he had obtained the diazepam in a sincere but misguided attempt to come off heroin, having been told by a doctor that he should try to cut back on his heroin intake in order to prepare him for a course of methadone a drug which relieves symptoms of heroin withdrawal without providing the "high" given by the illegal drug.

Barrie Hudson