Woman fraudulently claimed at least £34k

CHARLOTTE GREEN

AWOMAN has been handed a suspended sentence after she admitted defrauding the government out of at least £34,000 in benefits.

Eileen Chadwick, of Pennine Road, Bacup, pleaded guilty to failing to notify the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and Rossendale council of a change in circumstances affecting her entitlement to income support and housing benefit, and dishonestly making a false statement to the DWP on an employment support allowance claim form.

Mark Stephenson, prosecuting said the frauds took place from 2012 until March 2016 and totalled £43,730.

The court heard that Mrs Chadwick, 60, had been jointly claiming benefits for herself and her husband legitimately in her name, but after her husband and his brother inherited a property and he began to receive a rental income of £125 a month she did not declare this to the authorities.

Defending, Mark Stuart told the court that because of Mrs Chadwick’s physical and mental health issues, including severe arthritis which means she cannot work, she legally began to claim employment support allowance in November 2011.

He told the court this meant she would have still been entitled to benefits despite the rental payments, so the overpayment was equivalent to £34,000 rather than £43,730.

Mr Stuart said: “She failed to declare when her husband started to get rental payments from the particular property and she ought to have done so, it was wrong not to have done so because it was a joint claim made by her in their benefit.”

Sentencing Mrs Chadwick to nine months in prison, suspended for 12 months, Judge Andrew Blake said that the precise amount she had fraudulently obtained was not clear because the DWP had not responded to the court’s request to discover how much she would have been entitled to. He said: “It occurred over quite a long period of time.

“It becomes more difficult as time passes to correct something but of course what happens if you don’t do anything is that the dishonesty continues and the monies mount and that’s precisely what’s happened in this case.

“There is going to be a financial investigation and you may well be deprived of certain sums of money.”

She failed to declare rental payments