AN accountant and former North Yorkshire music festival promoter who tried to pay off his £50,000 debts by setting up a cannabis farm has received a suspended prison sentence.

Sean Antony Birdsall made an “extremely foolish decision” when he rented a property and used it to grow a crop of the drug worth up to £18,000 on the streets, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecution barrister Aisha Wadoodi said police found 1.68 kg of prepared cannabis, which Birdsall told them was two thirds of the crop, 215 plastic pots and hydroponic equipment when they raided his home near Tadcaster. He had already sold one third of the crop.

Defence barrister Glenn Parsons said Birdsall ran a music festival until it collapsed with debts of more than £50,000, and went into the drugs trade to help pay them off.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, said: “You are said to be an intelligent and highly-motivated man. I suppose the reality is sometimes intelligent people make extremely foolish decisions. You plainly fall into that category.”

Birdsall, 48, of Scarthingwell Park, Barkston Ash, near Tadcaster, a qualified accountant and founder of the now-defunct Limetrees Music Festival at Grewelthorpe near Ripon, pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis between October 2013 and April 2014, and possessing cannabis with intent on April 24, 2014, the date of the police raid.

He was given a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years on condition he carries out 200 hours’ unpaid work.

He must also pay £350 prosecution costs and £370 cash police found at his house was confiscated.

York Crown Court heard his employer has arranged that part of his pay in his current job is used to pay off his debts.

Miss Wadoodi said Birdsall told police the £2,000 he got for selling one third of his crop to family and friends had covered the £360 monthly rent of the Leeds property where the farm had been, and buying the equipment.

He had closed it down and moved the equipment to his home before the police raid because he had decided he wasn’t good at growing cannabis.

Mr Parsons called Birdsall “a man of boundless energy, enterprise and enthusiasm” who had been a force for good in his community for much of his life, and handed in a number of references.

The festival had always made a loss, and heavy rain in its last year had caused the £50,000 debts, the court heard.