A former IT manager has admitted defrauding the hospital where he worked out of £800,000.

Barry Stannard, 53, had been head of unified communications at the Mid Essex Hospital Trust at Broomfield Hospital at the time of the offences.

An investigation found Stannard, who is from Chelmsford, had stolen a total of £806,229.80 between 2012 and 2019.

Concerns were first raised when the trust, which has now merged with hospitals in south Essex, ran a data matching exercise on its payroll and accounts payable records.

An investigation was launched by the Local Counter Fraud Specialist provider (RSM) before it was escalated to the national team at the NHS Counter Fraud Authority.

While Stannard had submitted a ‘nil return’ declaration of interests form to the trust, the probe found he was actually the director of two companies that had received a large amount of money from the trust over at least seven years.

No products or services invoiced for by these companies were ever provided to the NHS.

The hundreds of invoices submitted by his own companies to the trust were all individually for relatively modest amounts – meaning Stannard was authorised to sign them off without further checks.

On the invoices he submitted, he also charged for VAT which was never forwarded to HMRC.

The VAT registration number quoted on some of the invoices was false and related to another legitimate company.

The VAT he charged the NHS was more than £132,000.

The payments came from the trust’s IT budget.

After being charged, Stannard admitted two counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of cheating the public revenue when appearing at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday (Wednesday, May 26).

He is due to be sentenced at the same court on June 30.