A thief who faked paying at self service tills has been banned from the city centre shops he pilfered.

Simon Ostler, prosecuting, said Andrew Philip Horsman, 36, pretended to pay with a bank card before walking out with large amounts of shopping on five occasions in five weeks.

He got away with more than £400 of goods before CCTV checks revealed his deceit and he was arrested.

His solicitor Jackie East, said: “He was stealing for subsistence having relapsed into heroin misuse.”

Horsman, of Cemetery Road, York, pleaded guilty to five charges of theft.

He was ordered to do 160 hours’ unpaid work, banned from Sainsbury’s stores in Piccadilly and Foss Bank and the Co-op in Paragon Street for 12 months, and ordered to pay £331.73 compensation to Sainsbury’s and £69.96 to the Co-op as well as £85 prosecution costs.

He had a long list of previous convictions. His last theft conviction had been in 2013.

“You know stealing from shops is wrong,” district judge Adrian Lower told him at York Magistrates Court.

Mrs East said Horsman had been working as a joiner in Brayton until he was convicted of careless driving in 2017 and lost his driving licence. That led to him losing his job. He started taking heroin again and ran into financial difficulties, which led to his crimes.

Since the thefts, he had been promised his job back when he got his driving licence back and had been going to a drug rehabilitation agency.

Horsman stole groceries worth £133.49 on November 13 from Sainsbury’s Foss Bank store, £47.35 on November 16, £86.85 on November 28 and £64.04 on December 4, all from Sainsbury’s Piccadilly store, and £69.96 from Co-op’s Paragon store.