The sister of a late Bradford playwright has avoided prison after she admitted selling cannabis to pay her bills.

When drugs squad officers raided Pamela Dunbar's house in Brafferton Arbor, Buttershaw, they seized 250 grammes of the class B drug from her kitchen as well as a roll of Clingfilm and electronic scales.

Dunbar, sister of the internationally acclaimed writer the late Andrea Dunbar, was yesterday made the subject of a 12-month community rehabilitation order by the Honorary Recorder of Bradford, Judge Stephen Gullick.

At an earlier hearing she had pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis and possessing the drug with intent to supply.

Judge Gullick said it was not in the public interest to send the 42-year-old mother, who had no previous convictions, to custody. But he warned her she should not become a cannabis dealer to solve her financial problems.

"Whatever your financial difficulties, and I have no doubt they are considerable from time to time, you must not let yourself get involved in dealing in this stuff because if you do so again I suspect another judge will not take such a sympathetic view," he said.

Judge Gullick ordered that reports on her progress with the community rehabilitation order should be prepared every three months.

"I hope, in the nicest possible way, we never meet again, but if we do it will be a slightly different ending, I suspect," he said.

Ewan McLachlan, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court that Dunbar said to police officers: "It's my gear. I deal it from this address. No-one else is involved."

During a police interview she admitted she had been dealing for about two weeks in July and said she made £100 on every 250 grammes of cannabis she supplied. Mr McLachlan said Dunbar sold the cannabis in deals of £5 and £10 and used the money to pay off bills.

Her sister Andrea Dunbar wrote her first play Arbor at the age of 15. She then wrote Rita, Sue and Bob Too aged 21, with the play being made into a successful film in 1987. She died in 1990, at the age of 29, from a brain haemorrhage while writing a sequel.