A drug dealer who won £21,000 compensation for an accident inside prison has been ordered to pay almost half his damages as compensation for the crime that led to him being in jail.

Stephen Hall received the payout from the prison service after being hit by a rock while he was building an ornamental pond in Channings Wood Prison at Newton Abbot in 2012.

He was serving a four year sentence for dealing in class A drugs and received the money after he had served his time and been released.

He has now been ordered to pay back the £9,587.40 which he still has in his bank account under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Hall, aged 55, formerly of Torquay but now of Clarendon Road, Brighton, had no assets when the first investigation into assets was carried out in 2011 and was ordered to pay a nominal amount of £1.

The figure by which he benefited from crime was set at £20,969.09 at the same hearing. It is pure coincidence that the amount is almost identical to the money he received in compensation from the prison service.

Hall was brought back to Exeter Crown Court under the Proceeds of Crime Act and ordered by Judge David Evans to pay £9,587.40 within three months or serve a further six months in jail.

His three bank accounts have already been frozen by financial investigators after they discovered he had gone on holidays to Amsterdam and Iceland while apparently living on £728.60 a month in benefits.

The money for the holidays had not come out of his bank accounts and he had not withdrawn any cash from them over the past month, leaving the investigators mystified at what he was living on.

Hall told the judge his brother paid for the trip to Amsterdam, a friend for the holiday in Iceland, and that he was not using his bank because he suffers from PTSD and is unable to leave his house.

He said friends lent him cash and allowed him to use their bank accounts to pay direct debits.

Hall claimed he should be allowed to keep the rest of his payout because he needed the money to pay for private treatment for PTSD.

He said he suffered from the illness as a result of his accident at Channings Wood and an incident in the 1980s in which he fell out of a window.

Judge Evans said the £9,587.40 payment is not unjust or disproportionate and that Hall could access treatment for PTSD on the National Health if he needed it.