Students swindled by a woman who ran a Worcester nail and beauty salon are unlikely to get compensation any time soon as a court has been told the owner only has assets of £1.

Kay Turford made more than £23,000 from eleven students when she ran training courses which were not officially registered, Worcester Crown Court heard today.

“A number of people lost significant amounts of money,” Benjamin Williams, for Worcestershire Regulatory Services, told the court.

Turford, of Crookbarrow Way, Norton, who ran Elite Nail and Beauty Academy in Lowesmoor, made a total of £23,105 in criminal benefit.

She pleaded guilty to 11 charges of unfair trading with five others taken into consideration, and as given a jail sentence of 12 months suspended for two years. The court was told the 60-year-old was on benefits and had no money.

Mr Williams said an investigation had shown Turford had no assets and no application would be made for a compensation order at this stage.

“If assets are acquired or discovered in future they can be recovered and it may be that a compensation order can be made then,” Mr Williams said.

Recorder Nicholas Jones ordered Turford to pay £1 under the Proceeds of Crime Act or face one day in prison. She was given 14 days to pay and was also ordered to pay £100 victim surcharge within three months.

Turford was registered as a training provider of NVQ courses up to level two in September, 2013, and took on students at Elite Nail and Beauty in Lowesmoor between autumn 2014 and November 2015.

They paid between £500 and £2,500 for the course but she had failed to register them with the governing body and without this, the qualifications were worthless.

Turford claimed Elite was taken over by the Weston Spencer Group in 2015, a company the court was told had since gone into liquidation. She said she mistakenly thought it was Weston’s responsibility to register students.

But there was no evidence such a takeover had ever taken place, the court heard.