A former employee at the Little Heroes Cancer Trust told a jury she went from loving her job to feeling unhappy and “a little bit intimidated” by the charity’s director Colin Nesbitt.

Administration worker Angela Walton said she resigned from her role after seeing a £10,000 bank transfer from the Little Heroes account to Nesbitt.

Speaking on a video link to Bradford Crown Court, Miss Walton said she spoke to him about the transaction.

“He said he finds it very upsetting that I am accusing him of stealing from the charity,” she said.

She told the court yesterday that Nesbitt explained that the money was to pay off a woman owed compensation by the charity. Miss Walton said she then wrote a letter resigning as a trustee of Little Heroes.

“I couldn’t be doing with this any more,” she said.

Nesbitt, 58, of Kent Road, Bingley, denies a £370,000 fraud and theft from the charity he founded after his grandson became ill with a rare form of cancer.

He pleads not guilty to five charges of fraud, three counts of supplying false and misleading information to The Charity Commission and one charge of stealing £7,000 from the Little Heroes Cancer Trust.

Miss Walton said she knew Nesbitt before she joined the charity and loved her job there.

But he failed to provide her with bank statements and paying in slips despite her requests for them.

Miss Walton said she left Little Heroes in February 2015 because she was moving from the Bradford area. By then she was no longer happy in her job and her daughter, also a trustee, had concerns as well.

“I wasn’t happy there any more. We just felt that we didn’t belong any more and I felt a little bit intimidated by him,” she said, meaning Nesbitt.

Cross-examined by defence barrister, Matthew Donkin, Miss Walton said the charity was “a very important cause” and she had met Nesbitt’s grandson many times.

By 2013, she was working there five afternoons a week, co-ordinating fundraising firewalks and toy drops at hospitals, counting money and giving talks to schools.

Miss Walton said that Nesbitt did a good job creating YouTube videos to help build up public knowledge about children’s cancer.

He would have bundles of cash in his pocket and he gave the staff £40 each to buy outfits for the charity’s Christmas event.

Mr Donkin suggested that there was no bank transfer of £10,000 from Little Heroes to Nesbitt, but Miss Walton said that she and her daughter saw the bank statement.

“We saw it and we went to speak to him about it,” she said.

Naomi Naik said she joined the charity in June 2015 to put its finances in order.

She told the jury the financial system had been “inadequate” and she was creating a proper audit trail.

After Nesbitt left in October 2015, files were missing from his office, she alleged.

The trial continues.