Guilty of £10k benefits scam, former BBC executive with 9 bank accounts
A FORMER BBC executive falsely claimed £10,000 in benefits, despite having tens of thousands of pounds in various banks and a house worth £120,000.
Wendy Bleazard received the handouts after claiming she had only £100 in a single account.
But she actually had nine bank accounts – one containing £26,000 – and had recently sold a London flat for £210,000.
Bleazard, 46, who worked as a teaching assistant at a primary in Edinburgh’s upmarket Morningside area, was convicted of benefit fraud in 2015 and sentenced to 60 hours’ community service.
But she recently applied to be a teacher and details of her case were disclosed during a hearing of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) in Edinburgh.
Following the hearing, the GTCS decided she was unfit to teach as a result of the benefits fraud.
Bleazard previously worked for the BBC as a business development manager and for its Top Gear magazine. She had also worked for Channel 4 as an account director in its PR team.
The GTCS hearing was told that she sold her London flat in 2010 and moved briefly to New York, where she claimed to have spent all of the proceeds. The following year, she returned to Penicuik, Midlothian, where she had grown up, and started to claim benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions as a single mother.
She also qualified as a teacher and teaching assistant.
But after benefits investigators ‘received intelligence’ in 2013 they discovered her nine bank accounts.
Bleazard had also bought her home in Penicuik from her father and received undeclared rental income. She sold that property for £119,000 and moved to a flat in Morningside.
During the GTCS hearing, she claimed she ‘could not recollect’ buying her father’s house.
In her defence, the panel was told: ‘The respondent invited the panel to view the offence as one which arose as a result of wholly unintentional mistakes on her part.
‘She had learned all possible lessons from the offence. [Bleazard] maintained that she would never knowingly act in the manner reflected in the conviction. It had not been her intention to receive money she was not entitled to.
‘She had made a mistake, had been incredibly naive, and she was truly sorry.’
But the GTCS rejected the application, stating: ‘The respondent had conducted herself in a sustained manner over a period of time and in a way that fell significantly short of the standards expected of a registered teacher.
‘The fundamental issue was that, at the time of the hearing, the respondent did not accept that she had been guilty of a criminal offence. This was despite the fact she had pleaded guilty to the offence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court after receiving legal advice.
‘The respondent stated she had been forced to plead guilty to the offence by her solicitor at the time.
‘The respondent maintained that rather than having knowingly obtained the sum of money by misrepresentation and failed to disclose information, she had made an honest mistake.’
It added: ‘The panel did not find that the respondent’s position on these points was either credible or reliable.
‘The respondent had also purchased her father’s home for £80,000 but her evidence was that she could not recollect having done so.’
The GTCS said Bleazard can apply again after two years.
‘Neither credible nor reliable’