THE head housekeeper of a York hotel has been jailed once more after police found £9,000 worth of drugs and a drug-dealing centre in her home.

Patricia Walker, 52, had already served a 12-month prison sentence for dealing amphetamines before police raided her house on November 23, 2012, said Aisha Wadoodi, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

Inside the house, in Greenwood Drive in Acomb, police found “everything that is associated with drug dealing”, the court heard.

Officers discovered various drug-related items, including scales, cutting agents and a white paste, along with £7,397 worth of amphetamine, £1,600 of Ecstasy, a small amount of cannabis worth £60 for her own personal use, a small amount of a Class A drug in a powder mix and also a stolen laptop computer.

Recorder Jeremy Hill-Baker said of the drug preparations: “It was being done for commercial purposes.”

According to a reference submitted to the court by her defence team, she was “highly thought of” by her employer, where she had worked for the last three years.

But the judge said it was impossible for him not to send her to prison, because of her previous conviction in 2007.

In 2007, York Crown Court heard she had kept an “open house” for drug users while she tried to pay off her debts by dealing in amphetamine.

The court heard then that her life had spiralled downwards after the breakdown of a relationship three years earlier.

In the latest allegations, Walker pleaded guilty to three charges of possessing drugs with intent to supply them to other people, three of possessing cannabis and handling stolen goods. She was jailed for eight months.

Peter Byrne, for the defendant, said prison could cost Walker her job as a head housekeeper and also her home.

Since 2007, she had made a new life for herself after decades of breaking the law and she was also a grandmother who helped her son with his children, said Mr Byrne.

She had known what was going on in her house, but the prosecution could not prove that it had been her who was carrying out the drug operation, he added.

Walker had two daughters both of whom were drug addicts, the court heard.

She had acquired the laptop at a car boot sale, but when she had examined after she got it home, she realised that it must have been stolen.