Guilty, Army general who lied to have £50k school fees paid free
A MAJOR general who cheated taxpayers out of nearly £50,000 in school fees yesterday become the most senior officer convicted at a court martial in 200 years.
Nick Welch, 57, claimed he and wife Charlotte, 54, were living in south-west London while he served as Assistant Chief of the General Staff in Whitehall.
He used the military’s ‘continuity of education allowance’ to put two of his children through two private schools in Dorset.
But his wife, a freelance consultant, actually spent most of her time at their £800,000 country home in Blandford Forum, Dorset,
‘Who’s going to question his word?’
Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire heard. Welch, who earned a £120,000-a-year salary, was caught after an anonymous tip from neighbours claimed he and his wife were never at their address in Putney.
The complaint was dismissed at the time by Mrs Welch as the actions of a jealous spouse. ‘Perhaps they are daunted by Nick’s rank, all of their husbands are two or three ranks below,’ she wrote in a text message to a friend.
Welch faces up to two years in custody when sentenced today, and could lose his OBE and Long Service Good Conduct medals, legal experts said.
He is the most senior officer to be found guilty at a court martial since Lieutenant General John Murray in 1815. Lt Gen Murray was hauled before a military court in Winchester accused abandoning 18 big guns during the siege of Tarragona in 1813.
He was found guilty of a single charge ‘ that he unnecessarily abandoned a considerable quantity of artillery and stores’, and admonished by the court.
Yesterday’s panel took five hours to find Welch guilty of a single count of fraud. He stood stonyfaced as the verdict was delivered.
The four-week trial heard Welch lied about how much time he and his wife spent at their Dorset home, 15 minutes’ drive from his children’s schools.
He claimed £48,388 between December 2015 and February 2017 to put them through the £37,000a-year Clayesmore School and £22,500-a-year Hanford School.
After Colonel Jeremy Lamb complained to the Army, Welch ordered his wife to drive up to London the following morning. The court heard Mrs Welch promised to put on a show of living at the property and would be ‘out and about and very sociable all week’. Welch said that he believed he satisfied the ‘underlying principles’ and ‘spirit’ of the rules as long as he and his wife ‘endeavoured to be together’. Mrs Welch was said to spend only around one in three days at the residence in Putney. The education allowance is offered by the Ministry of Defence to help fund 90 per cent of the schooling of the children of military personnel when they relocate on assignment, as long as their spouses live with them.
Prosecutor Sarah Clarke told the court that Welch used his rank to deceive the Army as ‘who is going to question the word of a Major General’?
Several former high- ranking Army officers were called to give evidence in praise of Welch’s character during the court martial, including General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of Britain’s Joint Forces Command.
Welch retired a two-star general in 2019, having served in Afghanistan, Germany, Northern Ireland and Belize. He has since taken a post as chief operating officer of Bournemouth Arts University.
‘Satisfied the spirit of the rules’