A GETAWAY driver from Rossendale convicted of being involved in an armed robbery at an estate agents has been jailed for five-and-a-half years.

Daniel Ogden claimed police had ‘got the wrong man’ after he was arrested for his involvement in a masked raid by two men on the offices of Pearson Ferrier in , Bury, on July 31 last year.

The 38-year-old, of George Road, Ramsbottom, insisted he had been angling with his son at the Fisherman’s Retreat, in Shuttleworth, when he was asked by John Grimshaw if he could borrow his green Mazda car.

Ogden told a Bolton Crown Court jury he agreed to drop off the car in Walmersley Old Road before walking to his mother’s home nearby, then the Grey Mare pub.

But even though he denied knowing that the car would be used as a getaway vehicle, he was convicted of conspiracy to rob.

Prosecutors alleged he was the driver, the car was found dumped outside his home and that Ogden used some of the proceeds of the robbery to settle a debt with the pub landlord.

Jurors had earlier heard how Grimshaw, 24, had burst into the estate agent with Jonathan Hogan, armed with a gun and a large wrench.

Grimshaw struck one of the staff members in the face with the weapon leaving him with facial injuries before several thousand pounds was stolen.

The pair fled but were later arrested, along with a 17-year-old girl, at the Trafford Centre while on a ‘spending spree’. Hogan, of Crostons Road, Bury, was found guilty of robbery and possession of a firearm and was jailed for seven years, as was Grimshaw, of no fixed abode, who admitted both charges.

The 17-year-old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and converting criminal property and was given a 12-month youth rehabilitation order.