A DRUG dealer who acted as a driver for people further up the chain has received a suspended prison sentence.

Jodie Green, of Lower Chase Road, Malvern had already admitted supplying class A drugs (cocaine) and allowing her car to be used by another without insurance when she appeared at Worcester Crown Court to be sentenced on Friday, April 28.

Officers spoke to the 24-year-old at the filling station at Powick, near Worcester, on July 26 last year.

She was a passenger in her Peugeot 206, which she had allowed her friend to drive without insurance.

Stuart Clarkson, prosecuting, said police searched the car and found telephones, one of which belonged to Green. Her mobile phone was analysed.

He said: "Some of the messages were clearly related to drugs and, on the basis of the evidence, the crown puts its case.

"She was a driver, driving other people around to collect drugs from people further up the chain, driving other people at the same or a lower level to sell drugs."

Her co-defendant in the case, Katie Peoples, who was driving the Peugeot, had already been sentenced to an 18 month community order for offences including possession of class A drugs and driving while disqualified.

One of the messages from Peoples to Green asked the defendant to take her to sell drugs to somebody called 'CJ' and in another she was asked to drive to Gloucester to pick up a 'weight'.

"She was acting as a driver for others further up the chain," Mr Clarkson said.

Green was interviewed by a probation officer before she was sentenced.

She told him she had had to leave her father's house when he got a new partner and was effectively homeless.

Her co-defendant, Peoples, offered her somewhere to stay and as a result felt obliged to drive her around.

Green left school at 15 with no formal qualifications but had worked in mobile catering and been employed at Clockwatchers in Worcester and the Swan at Hanley.

She started smoking cannabis at 13 and began using crack cocaine at the age of 23, which she stopped when she became pregnant.

She is living with her mother and is the main carer for her father, who has health problems.

She is still using heroin at the rate of £20 to £30 per day, the court was told.

Green is in a relationship and her partner, who was present in the public gallery, was described as being the driving force in getting her referred to Swanswell, the national drug and alcohol recovery charity.

Lee Masters, defending, said: "She appreciates she has done wrong."

Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins said Green entered an early guilty plea and would receive full credit for that, describing the offence as 'lower level street dealing'.

He sentenced her to two years in prison, suspended for two years, ordered her to complete 20 days of rehabilitation activity and gave her a six-month drug rehabilitation requirement.

The judge imposed no separate penalty for the insurance matter, but ordered her to pay a £140 victim surcharge.