A LIVERPOOL teacher who wrongly continued receiving wages, after she left her job, has been jailed after she spent the £43,000 on a new house.

Vicki Small, who used to work at Lister Drive Junior School, Old Swan, found salary payments of up to £1,700 a month appearing in her bank account for more than two years after she moved to another school in a different area.

The 36-year-old claimed she had tried to alert Liverpool city council bosses to the error, but that nothing was done.

However, a judge at Hull Crown Court jailed her for 15 months after she pleaded guilty to stealing the money.

Last night, Liverpool council bosses insisted that the overpayments had happened because the school had not informed them she had left.

But they said measures were now in place to prevent further mistakes.

Mother-of-three Small, who moved to Yorkshire in 2003, received the payments between July, 2002, and January, 2005.

Council bosses said they had tried to make Small bankrupt in 2006 to try to reclaim the debt before she was prosecuted.

Defence barrister Patricia Doherty told the court: “The defendant takes full blame for not having reported it.

“She admits she should have handed the money back personally. The extra money came in handy.” But, jailing her, the judge told her: “There was a calculated period of misconduct. Inevitably you and your partner enjoyed a standard of living that was not justified.”