Twelve pints of beer, a van full of asbestos and a shortage of toilets led to two men being charged with attempting to rob a hospital a court heard today.

Timothy Phelps, 36, of Finch Close, Luton, and Raymond Sear, 46, of Church Road, Totternhoe, Dunstable, appeared at South East Surrey Magistrates’ Court, charged with attempting to steal gas canisters filled with Entonox, a medical anaesthetic at Epsom Hospital on the evening March 19.

The men, an out-of-work farmer and a builder, were spotted by security men near the loading bay where the gas cannisters are kept. When the security guards checked the padlock to the gas store it had been cut.  They called police who tracked down the men's white van twenty minutes later in Dorking where the pair were stopped and arrested.

Boltcutters were found in the asbestos-filled van and Mr Sear told magistrates that: "Mr Phelps called and said ‘do you fancy a ride out - I’m going to look for bits and bobs’. 

But at court the men insisted that they only ended up in the car park because they had had so much to drink they were desperate for a place to relieve themselves.

Mr Sear said the pair originally drove to Cobham, where Mr Phelps was working at the time, and picked up some asbestos.

En route, Mr Sear said he drank three lagers in the van on top of the nine he had already consumed, and that the duo made numerous comfort stops.

Mr Phelps told the court that he thought that the pair could stop off at a few Epsom pubs on their way back from Cobham because he had worked in the area when the Epsom cluster of mental hospitals was dismantled and he thought he might see some old friends.

Mr Sear said the men, who were tipsy, pulled into Epsom Hospital because he "just wanted to go" and he thought it was a factory site.

He said: "If you drink 12 pints of lager you want to keep peeing."

Denying the duo had any intention to steal the gas canisters, he added: "There was too much asbestos already in Mr Phelps’ van to get anything in it anyway.  Plus I couldn’t lift anything."

"I just went for the trip out and I’m in all this trouble now."

In her closing statement, Alison Woodall, defending, said no forensic tests had been done to prove a link between the men and the attempted burglary, and it was not known how long prior to the incident the padlock had been inspected.

She said: "The evidence that the crown has put forward is deeply flawed and entirely circumstantial.  There clearly is reasonable doubt."

Finding both defendants not-guilty, chairman of the bench, Trevor Wiles, agreed: "The evidence in this case is circumstantial. 

"The bench cannot be sure of the conclusion that the defendants damaged the padlock and they were therefore attempting to burgle."