This’ll have to do for now then...
Moaning benefits family are given a £425,000 new home... and the hope of a BIGGER one to come
WITH four generous bedrooms, a huge living room and large garden, this detached ‘executive’ house is the sort of home many can only dream of living in.
The £ 425,000 property has been handed to a French migrant family of ten by a local authority after they complained their last taxpayer-funded home was too small.
Cameroon-born Arnold Sube and his wife Jeanne, both 33, were upgraded from a three-bed semi after claiming they were being ‘neglected’.
And the subsidised merry-go-round hasn’t stopped yet, as the family are living at the privately owned property under a temporary contract and could be given somewhere bigger. Around £820 of the £1,400-a-month
‘It’s quite unfair’
rent is being paid for by Luton Borough Council through local housing allowance.
The Subes – who could receive as much as £44,000-a-year in handouts – may have applied for discretionary top-up payments to cover the remainder. The couple declined to comment when approached at the house in Milton Keynes. The average house price in the area is £264,393.
Neighbours said they were outraged at the generous handouts. Portuguese nurse Rui Sousa, 47, said he and his wife paid their own rent and claimed no benefits, adding: ‘It’s quite unfair. We’re really struggling to pay for this place.’
A mother of five, who asked not to be named, said: ‘It’s disgusting. Me and my husband both work and we spend most of our income on the rent ... We can’t even get on the housing waiting list.’
The Subes, who have eight children, have reportedly cost UK taxpayers almost £240,000 in benefits and costs associated with their accommodation since arriving from Paris in 2012. They emigrated to France from Cameroon around 15 years ago and became EU citizens.
This makes them eligible for a raft of handouts in the UK.
Most benefits claims are capped at £26,000 a year per household. But if either Mr or Mrs Sube are working more than 16 hours a week they would be exempt from this cap – making them eligible for thousands of pounds in Local Housing Allowance and council top ups, child benefits and child tax credits.
When added to the £9,000 a year the NHS pays to fund Mr Sube’s nursing degree, this would leave their estimated yearly benefits in the region of £44,000.
Describing the family’s previous three-bedroom house last month, part-time care support worker Mr Sube said: ‘It’s so cramped and the conditions are terrible ... We need a five or six bedroom house... to comfortably fit our family.’
Despite the Daily Mail revealing he spent his child- hood in a cramped bungalow with no running water in Buea, south-west Cameroon, he went on to say it was the ‘worst house’ he had ever lived in. The family are understood to have reduced their demands after being warned they could be evicted if they didn’t accept what was on offer in future, and are now waiting for a permanent council tenancy.
Last night Michael Garrett, the leader of Luton Conservatives, said: ‘Why he didn’t leave his family in France to study here I don’t know. It’s not fair on everybody else.’
A council spokesman said it was ‘focused on its statutory duty. To protect privacy it is not in a position to provide updates on individual cases’.