A JUDGE has adjourned sentencing on a director of an optician's firm who used the names of dead patients in a scam to obtain £37,000 in false claims from the National Health Service.

Michael Hampton, 54, admitted 29 offences of false accounting with 824 further crimes taken into consideration before Kidderminster magistrates in March.

But his barrister Gareth Walters told Worcester Crown Court that he contested a large number of the offences.

Mr Hampton is well-known to Shuttle/Times & News readers as the founder of a memorial appeal which has raised thousands of pounds in aid of a Romanian orphanage.

The Stourport businessman set up the Sunshine Appeal after his daughter Sarah died in a car crash last year.

However, he stressed before his trial the then investigation by NHS fraud officers had nothing to do with the appeal, which had raised more than £12,000.

Regarding the forged names trial, Judge David Matthews ruled that witnesses would have to give evidence in a trial of issue.

He adjourned the case until October 19 for another hearing when the trial date would be fixed.

Hampton, of Commonfield, Titton, was a director of Hampton Optical, of Crown Lane, Bromsgrove.

The magistrates heard that a 14-month investigation was launched when suspicion grew about the large number of claim forms being sent to the local authority for payment.

Hampton's home and business offices were searched by police in September last year.

Prosecutor Malcolm Parkes told the judge that the forgeries involved some former patients who were dead. The rest were present patients.

He said Hampton maintained that the forgeries of claims relating to live patients were to maintain cash flow at his firm.

The defendant claimed he filled in forms for eye tests that professional optometrists had carried out but had not completed the paperwork.

Mr Parkes said the optometrists did not accept the defendant's explanation.

He said during five police interviews there was no mention of cash flow problems.

But Mr Walters said Hampton had always contested some of the charges and had indicated his position from the outset through his solicitors.

Granting bail, Judge Matthews said there would have to be a trial of issue before sentencing to determine matters which were in dispute between Hampton and the prosecution.