A woman who stole £10,000 from her bosses to pay for her mother's hip replacement operation has been spared a jail sentence.

Yasmin Foster, 46, of Fernbrook Avenue, Southend, helped herself to the cash from her employers Dagenham Motors when she learned her mum would have to wait five years for the operation on the NHS.

She stole £10,436 over a four-month period either from the tills or by forging paperwork, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

Foster admitted four counts of theft and four counts of false accounting. She asked for a further 82 offences to be taken into consideration.

Clare Ashcroft, mitigating, said her client had recently taken out a loan to repay the company in full.

She said: "Her mother needed a hip replacement operation and it would have been about four or five years to get one on the NHS. Her mother's condition was deteriorating rapidly."

She was sentenced to a 200-hour community punishment order and ordered to pay £138 costs.