A woman bank worker accused of cheating a hospital's charity trust out of £200,000 has been sent for trial by Basildon magistrates.

Christine Pudney, 46, was alleged to have siphoned off the money from Thameside Community Healthcare Trust, based in Grays. She is also charged with stealing more than £8,000 from her employers - the TSB branch in Basildon town square.

Assistant manager Pudney, of Beambridge, Basildon, was said to have carried out the six offences of false accounting and one of theft between October 1991 and November 1997.

She was given bail and will return to Crown Court on January 29.

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