A swindling NHS executive has been forced to repay the £11,000 she stole from the health service by siphoning off cash to her husband.

Paula Vasco Knight used her position as the NHS’s lead on equality and diversity to swindle the money when she was also the chief executive of the Torbay NHS Trust.

She used NHS funds to pay for non existent work carried out by his design company Thinking Caps and carried out the fraud despite earning £197,000.

The couple have now been ordered to repay the £11,072 to the NHS within three months or serve six weeks each in prison. They have also been ordered to pay £2,500 costs within a year.

The order was made at Exeter Crown Court after a year-long financial investigation by health service accountants into the couple’s assets.

Mr Vasco-Knight will have to cash in £12,302.02 from a pension policy with the Clerical and Medical Insurance company to raise his share of the compensation.

The amount is calculated to reach £5,536, half of £11,072, after charges and tax are deducted.

The couple changed their pleas and admitted fraud half way through their trial at Exeter in January last year.

Vasco-Knight, aged 54, of The Seasons, Runcorn, and her husband Stephen, aged 46, of the same address, both admitted a single count of fraud.

She was jailed for 18 months, suspended for two years and ordered to do 250 hours unpaid community work. He was jailed for 10 months, suspended for two years and ordered to do 150 hours unpaid community work.

At a Proceeds of Crime hearing at Exeter today Recorder Mr Malcolm Galloway rubber-stamped an agreed settlement.

He set the amount by which each defendant benefited from crime as £5,536 and the available amount in each case as the same amount.

He ordered them each to pay the money within three months or go to jail for six weeks. He also ordered them each to pay £1,250 costs and ruled they did not have the means to meet the full costs of £8,458.

Neither were present for the hearing but their barrister Mr Lloyd Morgan appeared by video link from Liverpool Crown Court and agreed the confiscation order.

Mrs Vasco-Knight has been receiving treatment for her mental health since collapsing in the dock as she entered her guilty pleas last year.

During the original trial the court heard how she diverted money which she was paid as a bursary by the NHS Leadership College to her husband Stephen and pushed through false invoices to ensure he got paid.

He ran a graphic design business called Thinking Caps from the garden shed at the £640,000 where they lived at the time in Totnes, South Devon.

Vasco-Knight’s career appeared to be the embodiment of the equality and diversity policies which she was in charge of until her fall from grace.

She was a former nurse who rose through the ranks of NHS management until she became the Chief Executive of Torbay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Torbay Hospital and other units in South Devon and the South Hams.

She was awarded a CBE in the 2014 New Year’s honours list and paid a total of £197,000 for her work at the trust and her one-day-a-week equality job.

She was the NHS’s most senior black executive, having enjoyed a meteoric rise which led to her being the deputy chief executive at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth before taking up the top job at Torbay Hospital.