Port Talbot NHS manager who stole £300k from GP surgery jailed

NHS practice manager Clare Boland admitted fraud

A woman who stole more than £300,000 from the GP surgery she managed has been jailed for three years.

Clare Boland, 51, from Briton Ferry, was a practice manager at Fairfield Surgery in Port Talbot when she began making unauthorised payments from her employer's account in August 2017.

Swansea Crown Court heard Boland had stolen £324,706.85 by the time she was suspended in March 2022.

She pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position at a previous hearing.

At a sentencing hearing on Friday, the court heard how Boland, who was on a salary of £53,000 a year, was given "sole responsibility for the day-to-day financial operations of the surgery" since she started the role in 2009.

She had the "full trust" of the partners and her actions have put them under "substantial financial risk and pressure", the court was told.

One of the senior partners was said to have required counselling, had trouble sleeping and suffered panic attacks since discovering Boland's crimes, which took place over a five-year period.

Some of the monthly payments made into Boland's account, ranging from around £2,500 to £13,000, "far exceeded" the partners' own salary payments.

When a senior partner at the surgery discovered money was being wrongly paid into an account every month, Boland claimed it was an administrative error, then that there had been an underpayment to HMRC.

Clare Boland pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position at a previous hearing

After being questioned by her employers, she wrote a letter claiming she "felt under stress and felt humiliated in the way they'd approached her in respect of these payments", the court heard.

But when the money was found to be going into her own bank account, she was arrested at home.

The court heard it had a "devastating" effect on staff at the surgery, which serves more than 800 patients.

Sentencing Boland to three years in prison, judge Catherine Richards noted the fact Boland was the single parent of a 10-year-old daughter.

But she added: "The impact of this sort of fraud is varied - emotional, practical and financial."

Boland will serve half her sentence in custody, with the remainder on licence.

Following sentencing, Cheryl Hill, deputy operational fraud manager for the NHS Counter Fraud Service Wales, said: "Boland abused her position and the trust of her employers and colleagues for her own personal greed.

"NHS CFS Wales will now use their powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to recover the money Boland stole and return it to the victims."