General jailed for 21 months over school fees fiddle
A MAJOR general was jailed for 21 months yesterday after cheating taxpayers out of nearly £50,000 in school fees.
Nick Welch, 57, is the most senior officer to be convicted at court martial in more than 200 years.
He had already left the Army but was retrospectively dismissed and will no longer benefit from the rank of retired major general. He was also ordered to repay the fraudulently claimed money.
Welch, who had a glittering career and was awarded an OBE, used the Army’s ‘continuity of service allowance’ to put two of his children through private schools in Dorset, near the family home.
He claimed he and his wife, Charlotte, 54, were living in Putney, south- west London, while he served as Assistant Chief of the General Staff in Whitehall, so qualifying for the allowance. It helps 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.
But Mrs Welch, a freelance consultant, instead spent most of her time at their £800,000 country home in Blandford Forum, Dorset, which broke the rules.
Judge Advocate General Alan Large told Welch: ‘The higher you rank, the more important it is that you uphold the values and standards of the Army in which you serve, and when an officer of the rank of major general offends as you have, the potential to erode discipline and undermine morale is considerable.
‘Your rank of major general and role as the Assistant Chief of the General Staff are factors which aggravate the offence and require recognition in the sentence which we must pass today.
‘You ignored multiple warnings which aggravated your offence; your good character and exemplary conduct mitigates the sentence.’
Welch sat stony-faced alongside his wife as he was jailed. It is understood he will initially be held at Bulford Military Court Centre in Wiltshire before being transferred to the military correctional training centre – nicknamed the Glass House – in Colchester, Essex. He is likely to serve around ten-and-a-half months.
Welch had complained that he could not afford his children’s private school fees despite his ‘lofty salary’ of £120,000 a year.
The allowance he claimed was spent on the £22,500-a-year Hanford School and the £37,000-a-year Clayesmore School, both 15 minutes’ drive from the family’s Dorset home.
A four-week trial at Bulford Military Court heard that Welch and his wife maintained that their residence in Putney was where they lived. His fraud was discovered after ‘irate’ neighbours in London told the authorities they were rarely present at the address.
Mrs Welch dismissed the claims at the time as the actions of a lower ranked officer’s jealous spouse.
A military panel took five hours to convict Welch of one charge of fraud, which he had denied. He swindled £49,212 in education allowance.
After leaving the Army in 2019, Welch became chief operating officer at Arts University Bournemouth, but last night it said he had left this post ‘with immediate effect’.
The verdict means Welch is the most senior officer to be found guilty at a court martial since 1815 when Lt Gen John Murray was accused of abandoning 18 big guns during the siege of Tarragona in Spain in 1813.
A military court found Murray guilty of a charge ‘that he unnecessarily abandoned a considerable quantity of artillery and stores’. He was admonished by the court.
‘You ignored multiple warnings’