Benefit cheat fiddled £7,000 while working in a JOB CENTRE

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 13:01 EST, 28 November 2011


A benefits cheat was caught out claiming £7,000 in taxpayers' money while working at a Jobcentre.

Nicola Ashcroft, 41, secured work as a jobs advisor in July 2009, two months before winning an appeal tribunal to claim income support.

Ashcroft, from Bolton, Greater Manchester, had initially been turned down for the benefit in 2008 after being hospitalised for anorexia, and following the break up of her marriage.

Biting the hand that feeds: Nicola Ashcroft, 41, claimed £7,000 in income support while working as a jobs advisor at a job centre

Biting the hand that feeds: Nicola Ashcroft, 41, claimed £7,000 in income support while working as a jobs advisor at a job centre

She won an appeal in 2009, but because she had started work in the interim, she was only allowed to claim backdated money up until the point she began work.

However, Bolton magistrates heard that while Ashcroft had informed the tribunal of her new job she did not inform the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were also her new employers, and so she continued to claim the benefit, taking £7,000.

Glen Wrigley, defending, said Ashcroft has now repaid the money she was overpaid, adding: 'She has never even had a speeding ticket and when I say she is mortified to be here it is an understatement.'

Ashcroft pleaded guilty to failing to notify a change in circumstances affecting entitlement to benefit.

Caught out: Ashcroft didn't inform Department for Work and Pensions - her new employer - that she had a job

Caught out: Ashcroft didn't inform Department for Work and Pensions - her new employer - that she had a job

Magistrates sentenced her to a six-month community order with an activity requirement and ordered her to pay £100 prosecution costs.

The court heard she suffered with anorexia for 20 years and in May 2008 she was hospitalised, weighing just four and a half stones.

She was discharged in December 2008 but the following month her 15-year marriage broke down and although her and husband James separated they continued to live at the same address.

Mr Wrigley said that at the time she was trying to get her life back together as well as supporting her best friend Karyn Killiner, mother of teenage model Amy Leigh Barnes who was murdered in 2008.


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