FORMER Marlow Town Mayor PA Jaqueline Roberts was unfairly sacked for submitting false receipts after the Senior Citizens' Christmas Lunch, a tribunal ruled.

Mrs Roberts, of Telford Way, High Wycombe, was awarded £1,125 compensation on Wednesday at the hearing which found Marlow Town Council had bungled her dismissal. This was 40 per cent of the amount she had been seeking, and was based on a ruling taking all the evidence before the tribunal into account.

Chairman Stephen Vowles said Mrs Roberts was not given the opportunity to hear the case against her, the investigation was "wholly inadequate" and the appeals procedure "manifestly unfair".

He added: "We were concerned that the dismissal was lamentably deficient of any fair or reasonable procedure whatsoever."

Mrs Roberts brought the case against the town council having been sacked from her job as Cllr Maurice Oram's PA because she failed to provide accurate receipts for the presents.

At the tribunal in Reading, Mrs Roberts denied deliberately submitting inaccurate receipts for £204 of gifts she bought for the pensioners' party in January 2002.

Mrs Roberts said she went to Days Gone Bye in Taplow on three separate occasions to buy presents for the occasion, storing the gifts in her loft and filing the receipts at home.

But from January 2 to January 22, Mrs Roberts was off work sick with gastroenteritis and a friend dropped off the gifts with a handwritten summary of the expenditure.

Vivien Knott, financial officer at the council, said she needed the original receipts which Mrs Roberts said she submitted when she returned to work on February 22.

But two days later the receipts had disappeared and Mrs Roberts handed over three photocopied versions comprising three bills totalling £204 one of which had been altered by hand.

Mrs Knott told the tribunal: "The receipts I was given didn't tally in any way, shape or form."

After a further three weeks off sick, Mrs Roberts stormed out of a heated meeting with town clerk Howard Bellairs and Mrs Knott on March 5 when they broached the subject of the receipts.

She said she received her letter of dismissal for gross misconduct the next day, adding: "I was very shocked and upset. At no point had anyone suggested that disciplinary action was being taken against me."

Cllr Oram approached Mr Bellairs two days later to try to get him to reinstate his PA, but after initially caving in to his demand, Mr Bellairs decided to stick to his decision to sack her.

The former mayor narrowly survived a vote of no confidence last April, when councillors challenged him for interfering in staffing matters outside of his remit as a councillor.

On May 3, an appeals hearing comprising councillors Alex Collingwood, Andy Howland and Ivor Coleman decided to uphold Mr Bellairs' decision.

In October, Mrs Roberts accepted a police caution in connection with allegations of theft and false accounting because she did not want to defend criminal charges in court, she said.