REPEAT burglar Edward Wharton was today back behind bars for his latest offences.

The 23-year-old burglar and conman, who also has convictions for public order offences, was jailed for 30 months for raids he says were prompted by the consequences of a family feud.

Last year he and members of his family defied a judge's warning to behave and reacted angrily outside York Crown Court when brothers Terence and Robert Gibb-Kirk were given community service orders for burglary and assaulting Julie Wharton and a female friend.

When Edward Wharton started his latest crimes, he was on licence from a two-year sentence for a house break-in and other offences.

"You appear yet again before the crown court for offences of burglary," Judge Trevor Kent-Jones told Wharton.

"Two of these are house burglaries. One was a burglary on a betting shop you committed quite shortly after you had been released from prison and quite valuable property was taken from it."

Wharton, of Nunthorpe Crescent, South Bank, York, pleaded guilty to burgling a house in South Bank, and burgling the betting shop. He asked for a second house burglary, a hotel burglary and two offences of obtaining money by deception to be taken into consideration.

York Crown Court was told that Wharton had conned two people he says are male and not elderly into handing over about £900 for gardening work he did not do.

For Wharton, David Bradshaw said he needed money after his premises were attacked by members of the Gibb-Kirk family.

He had committed the burglaries because his financial needs were so desperate.

But he denied stealing some of the property said to have been taken in the raids.

In August 1997, Edward Wharton was jailed for two years for burglary and deception, including an offence of deceiving an 87-year-old woman in York, with another young man.

Released on licence halfway through the sentence, he committed a public order offence against a young shop assistant and was sent back to jail for two months.

He was back on licence for the two-year sentence when he broke into the betting shop.

His burglary career began in 1994 when he was jailed for eight months. He has had regular convictions for burglaries ever since.