A disciplinary hearing against North Yorkshire Coroner, solicitor Jeremy David Cave, was adjourned yesterday to a date to be fixed pending a criminal trial he is due to face next year.

Andrew Miller, for the Law Society, told the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in London that Mr Cave, of Sowerby, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, had been charged with four offences of obtaining money transfer by deception.

His next court hearing is in the first week of September. A trial date will not be known until later this year and the trial will be next year.

Requesting the adjournment, Mr Miller said Mr Cave would feel "impeded in criminal proceedings if he has to answer these allegations" at the tribunal.

He practised as Jeremy Cave Solicitors, Thirsk, which was shut down by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors pending a tribunal hearing.

His wife, Susan, 43, was awarded £58,000 damages by an employment tribunal after she was sacked from her £40,000-a-year post as headteacher of Ripon Cathedral Choir School when 18 parents at the school issued an ultimatum to the governors, telling them to sack her or they would remove their children, after it was revealed her husband faced a disciplinary hearing.

Mr Cave, who has been a solicitor for 20 years, was questioned by the North Yorkshire fraud squad over allegations of overcharging and these overlapped the allegations being made by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors.