A FARMER who showered banks with cow manure has won his ten-year battle against the NatWest Bank.

David Cannon, 71, said the settlement, thought to be worth £300,000, would end the dispute which has seen him vent his fury on two branches of the bank with a ten tonne broadside of manure.

He was yesterday sentenced for the fourth such attack carried out in the last decade.

Workers at the bank in Ponteland, Northumberland, arrived for work to find the doorway blocked by a huge pile of dung, deposited by the farmer with a manure spreader.

The settlement comes three weeks before Mr Cannon's case was due to be heard before the High Court in London. The bank had made a number of offers to Mr Cannon, of South Dissington Farm, near Ponteland, but he had turned them down.

He alleged unauthorised transfers of more than £70,000 had been made from his farm account.

Mr Cannon's campaign saw him deluge branches in Newcastle and Ponteland with manure. He also barricaded himself into the Ponteland branch, blocked the entrance to the Newcastle premises with a tractor, and nailed shut the doors of another Newcastle branch of the bank.

Yesterday, he appeared before Bedlington magistrates to be sentenced for his last protest. Mr Cannon was given two 60-day prison sentences, suspended for 12 months for criminal damage and a breach of a conditional discharge, to run concurrently. He was also ordered to pay £845.60 compensation, had court costs of £250 awarded against him and was given a £100 fine and nine penalty points put on his licence for careless driving.

After the hearing, Mr Cannon said: "There is no point continuing now, it is not worth it.

"I can't turn the clock back, and all the money on the planet can't put right what has happened to me and my wife, Mary, over the last ten years.

"I will be getting on with my life from today and there will be no more manure-spreading."

A spokesman for NatWest said: "Both sides now consider that this long-running matter is best settled by consent, and the bank agreed, without accepting liability that it will make a payment to Mr and Mrs Cannon and meet their reasonable legal costs to bring the dispute to an end.