Nurse Sue Tagg is furious that a man convicted of burning her two cars received 80 hours community service and was allowed to pay her £2,000 compensation over almost eight years.

Now Mrs Tagg, who lives on a narrowboat on Oxford Canal at Kirtlington, near Bicester, has suffered another blow - her replacement car has been stolen.

Sue and the remains of one of her cars

Police discovered it abandoned in Ashby Road, Bicester. A 13-year-old boy is helping them with inquiries.

Two Peugeot 205s belonging to Mrs Tagg and her husband, Keith, were burned out in Mill Lane, Kirtlington, on January 10. The attack was discovered by their daughter, Jessica, 13, on her way to school.

The Tagg family, who have three other children, Josh, 15, Joe, nine and William, eight, had no transport and Mrs Tagg, an agency nurse, said they did not even have a car to go and look at other cars.

Mr Tagg was forced to walk five miles to get to work as a boat painter at Upper Heyford, Bicester, while his wife had to give up work for several weeks.

Mrs Tagg, pictured inspecting the wreck of her car, was furious when the man convicted of the crime was given community service and allowed to pay the compensation in instalments of £5 a week.

She said: "I don't really feel as though he is being punished enough. The man is unemployed, so doing community service will not inconvenience him.

"It is me, the victim that is being punished. If the man does not pay up, I have to call the courts. I don't want a connection with this man for eight years."

Mrs Tagg wrote to the magistrates court to complain about the period the man had been given to pay her compensation.

She said she received a reply stating that the magistrates had been bound by the legal system.

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said: "It is a matter for the court to decide how much a person pays back and over how long a period of time.

"The danger of doing it over too short a period is that they won't be able to pay at all. There are not any rules that we have set down that say it must be paid off over a certain period, it will depend on how much there is to pay and the individual case."