JAILING her for four years on Thursday, Recorder John Hardy QC described parish council fraudster Joanne Wills as a ‘leper’ and an ‘outcast’.

Deputy clerk Wills stole more than £160,000 from Towersey and Chinnor parish councils over a decade - before the falsified invoices were discovered during the coronavirus pandemic.

You can read our report from the sentencing hearing here.

In a lengthy set of sentencing remarks, the judge told 47-year-old Wills: “For much of the last two decades you, Joanne Wills, have occupied positions – senior positions – of great responsibility within your local community – or communities.

“At a point in time when public expenditure was reined back by the government then in charge of our economy, local authorities were hit particularly hard.

“Their budget constraints have been the subject of considerable publicity and there is no need for me to rehearse it.

“But it is a fact and the little things that parish councils did – and did very well – could no longer be done to the same extent.

“I quote Mr [Mark] Davis, the chairman of the parish council: ‘It was not possible to upgrade the cricket ground, to improve the playing fields’ car park, to repair the culvert under the village green, to repair the bus shelter or put traffic calming measures in place…because the council simply did not appear to have the funds available’.

“Of course, one reason that the funds weren’t available was because of the constraints put on public expenditure by central government.

“But in the case of Towersey Parish Council, the funds weren’t available because through your fraudulent representations you stole them. Over £135,000 passed into your bank account from those parish funds over the course of some 10 years.

“And when that wasn’t enough, you tried to cover up by stealing from another authority, Chinnor Parish Council, transferring money both into your account – sustaining your fraudulent habits – and into the Towersey Parish Council account to…cover up what you had stolen from them.

“One sees from Mr Davis’ statement the sheer level of pride, justifiable pride, that he takes at the relevant time in chairing the parish council, in reflecting the local community – an exercise of democracy in action at its best - but you put paid to that.”

He noted that the Towersey councillors had supported her when the allegations first came to light, assuming it was a ‘terrible mistake’.

Oxford Mail: Joanne Wills leaves Oxford Magistrates' CourtJoanne Wills leaves Oxford Magistrates' Court

“They still stood behind you,” Recorder Hardy said.

“Of course it’s not only the councillors and the community who suffer in circumstances such as this. It is every single person who pays their council tax, every law abiding person who scrapes and saves in order to pay the local precept.

“As Mr du Feu [defence barrister] has realistically accepted with his customary eloquence, you now have no place in that community. You are an outcast, a leper almost, and you have brought that upon yourself.

“I have no doubt that you are a member of a close and loving family but you have brought them down in their community as well by what you did.”

The judge read chunks from the Towersey parish chairman’s impact statement, which chronicled the effect of Wills ‘cynical’ fraud.

Saying he agreed with the councillor’s assessment, Recorder Hardy said: “His description of the effect of your conduct upon the community your purported to serve is blisteringly accurate.

“You were regarded and I quote ‘as a pillar of the community’. You turned out to be the very opposite.

“Three of your friends have provided character references which I have read with care.

“But I am bound to note that it appears that you have deceived them as much as you deceived everything else in the community.

“The deception being that you were a good, loyal, honest, hard-working person. Yet you were none these things.”

READ MORE: Parish council clerk jailed for fraud

He went through the sentencing guidelines for the offence of fraud by false representation. There had been an abuse of trust and, having previously referred the lawyers to the New Testament parable of the ‘widow’s mite’ to illustrate why the sums stolen from the relatively poorly-off parish councils would have represented a more significant loss, said he placed the offending in the ‘top of the category’ on the guidelines.

Recorder Hardy passed a total sentence of four years, factoring in a third reduction for Wills’ guilty plea at the magistrates’ court.   

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward