A PROLIFIC street robber with more than 130 criminal convictions to his name has won a reduction in the minimum length of time he must spend behind bars.

Mark Liam Merron (36), of Dartmouth Road, Whitefield, was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment for public protection (IPP) and ordered to serve at least seven years after admitting and being convicted of various counts of robbery, attempted robbery, burglary and damaging property.

But in a hearing at London's Criminal Appeal Court, three top judges ruled that the minimum term, imposed at Manchester Crown Court in December last year, was "manifestly excessive" - and slashed it to five-and-a-half years.

Mr Justice Forbes, who sat with Lord Justice Dyson and Judge John Rogers QC, described how Merron's offending had left his various victims traumatised by their experiences.

The crime spree for which he received the IPP sentence began on June 25 last year, just a day after he was freed from a previous prison sentence.

Offences included using a stolen taxi in a failed burglary at a newsagents on Heywood Road, Prestwich, and then in an attempted robbery at a toy shop in Bury Old Road, Prestwich, where he brandished a metal bar.

Merron's counsel, Aisha Jamil, argued that the minimum term imposed on him was too long, since the judge had stated that, had he been imposing a standard, determinate sentence, he would have sentenced him to 14 years in jail.

Allowing the appeal, the judge said: "These were very serious robberies, in which weapons were used and the victims overpowered and left significantly affected by their ordeal.

"However, in our view, the appropriate notional determinate term, having regard to the totality of the criminality, would have been 11 years, producing a minimum term of five-and-a-half years, from which the time spent in custody on remand of 399 days falls to be deducted."

Merron will only be released after serving five-and-a-half years if he can persuade the Parole Board he is no longer a risk of harm to members of the public.