A woman who used a metal broom to attack her abusive boyfriend was back before the courts.

Claire Browner admitted breaching the 12 month community order handed to her by a Swindon judge last year after she admitted assaulting her ex in the town centre car park where they had set up camp.

The 31-year-old, who has battled an addiction to heroin, failed to attend probation appointments.

But she was spared further punishment after Judge Jason Taylor QC said she was doing well on the order and working closely with women’s charity the Nelson Trust.

Marking the breach with three rehabilitation sessions, the judge told her: “The court is sympathetic to people’s circumstances, okay? And whilst of course you have to be punished, which you understand, you are turning things around and there will be slip-ups along the way.

“You have been in a chaotic place but it seems from what I have been told, not least because you have a phone, that things are on the up.

“Everyone, including me, wants you to succeed. They want you to do well and will give you as much support as we possibly can. But you need to understand when people come back before the court for breaching orders the courts aren’t happy, because they expect the orders to be completed.”

In December, the crown court heard then homeless Browner had been in a relationship with her victim for around five years. On November 5, when the assault to place, the couple were living in the Debenhams car park.

The woman returned to their makeshift home in the early hours and tried to wake her boyfriend by poking him with a broom.

Others in the car park laughed but her actions, perhaps unsurprisingly, irritated the man. He pushed her in order to get her to stop. She said he had also spat at her.

Browner swung the metal broom at him, knocking him in the head and leaving him bruised and scarred.

Ray Tully, defending, said his client had a long-running heroin addiction: “It’s a sobering thought for all of us that but for a few steps from where we are there is an entirely different world that exists – a world my lay client occupied.”

She had since ended the relationship, the court was told.

In addition to the community order Browner was banned from going into the Debenhams car park.

Browner was represented in the breach proceedings by barrister Andrew Stone. Tanya Wilshire appeared for the National Probation Service.