A BURGLAR who plagued York and made off with goods worth £40,000 has had his jail term slashed by nearly a third.

London's Criminal Appeal Court reduced the sentence on Michael Andrew Hester, who committed dozens of burglaries and thefts in Huntington between June 2002 and January this year.

Hester, 32, was jailed for six years at York Crown Court on June 24 - but that has now been cut to four-and-a-half years.

Hester's original sentencing hearing was told he raided 32 houses by night and tried to break into a church in 41 crimes carried out to fund his heroin addiction.

The defendant, of Fossway, York, pleaded guilty to three house burglaries, two thefts from cars and one offence of abstracting electricity by using a metal loop to bypass his home's meter.

He also asked for 29 house burglaries, one attempted church burglary and five thefts from vehicles to be taken into consideration.

The Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, told him: "Burglary of a church used to be called sacrilege in the good old days.

"You have stolen property worth something in the region of £40,000 and you have had a good run. Now you have got to pay for it."

But Mrs Justice Dobbs, sitting at the Appeal Court with Mr Justice Gray, said Hester's six-year sentence was "too high".

She said: "The grounds of appeal are that the sentence of six years was manifestly excessive and that the judge failed to take into account his admissions and early guilty plea.

"This case, although containing a lamentable amount of offences, contained none of the serious aggravating factors which would have justified ... a six-year sentence.

"In our judgement, the sentence was too high and we would quash it and impose one of four and-half years in its stead.

"To that extent, this appeal is allowed."

Hester was linked to his crimes because of DNA evidence from a lemonade bottle and cigarette stub.

When police searched Hester's home on May 6, they found a large cache of property from unsolved burglaries and discovered he was fiddling his electricity meter.

Updated: 10:10 Tuesday, November 29, 2005