To ask someone to explain how Philpott could claim 60k?

[alphablock]

I should start by saying that I usually ignore the headlines in the Daily Fail about people who are able to claim mind-boggling amounts of benefits as I believe such cases are few and far between. However, I can't help but question the numbers being widely quoted in the press today.

I have seen figures of between £1,000 and £2,000 a month quoted as being the loss in child benefit Philpott anticipated if his ex got custody of their 5 kids. This suggests child benefit is between £40 and £80 per child per week, which it obviously isn't.

I thought unemployed people could claim £53 per week, so even if he was able to also get child benefit for 11 kids, this doesn't add up to 60k. Both the women were working as cleaners, so not sure what other benefits they would get (and be forced to hand over to him).

I know he was getting housing benefit, but they were living in a 3 bed house in Derby, so surely the rent couldn't have been that much.

I know he is a dreadful individual and he clearly had made a decision to live off the state and the women he manipulated, but is there actually any truth behind the figure of 60k or has this been plucked out of thin air?

Guardian said they were raising 11 children on £8000 a year.

Ch4 just said
£8000 child benefit
Each woman worked and earned £18k ish in WFTC
Plus housing benefits calculated a total of £54k

Considering one paper set the child benefit at £600 a week I think the figures are being plucked from thin air...

As always with these things, the figures are vastly inflated to get people all riled up about benefit scum.

(And I say that as a claimant of partial housing benefit, CTC and WTC as dh on low wage, people think we must be loaded too).

Times said they were on the equivalent of £100,000 pa.

He had the only bank account so he got the lot.

But 17 children and 3 adults must be expensive to maintain.

Kim - it depends where you live.

We are in London so rents are high. Dh earns 22k, but the rent on a two bed flat here is £1400 per month, so we get help. If he earned that amount and we lived in a much cheaper area of the country, I doubt we would qualify for HB at at all.

I also read £10000.00 as well, personally think its a load of bollocks and papers are just making it up.

They will have added on things like healthy start vouchers and free school meals which would be a fair amount for 11 children as well.

Thanks everyone. Glad it's not just me that thinks the papers are making stuff up.

Channel 4, which actually attempts to do fact checking, came up with a possible 55k, mainly from child tax credits. I don't know much about these but on the website it says you don't need to be working and can get up to £2,690 per child and £545 per child is the basic amount. Someone should just kindly leak what they were actually getting so the debate could be slightly more reasonable.

I have just been working thru this; there is no way those women were each receiving £20k in WFTC. The system wasn't that generous.

the other thing is, in spite of so many kids, they didn't have the material trappings of a family group on such a high income.

Guessing numbers here.

From the Telegraph article: "the court was told he lost £1,000 a month when his lover Miss Willis left him."

Or £12k/annum. IF Mairead brought in a similar income with her tax credits, and IF all other numbers in that Torygraph article were correct, that suggests household income of
£12k Mairead
£12k Lisa
£8k child benefit
£8k housing benefit (assume this didn't depend on Lisa+kids being there)
?school dinners equivalent (£100 week, £4k/yr)

Not a lot more than £44k, anyway. For 15 people or so.

You also don't get free school meals on working tax credits, do you?
Thought healthy start was only for income support too?
You don't get free prescriptions either.

2007 TV documentary had them down as claiming £508/week (or about £25k/annum).

Publishing outlandish guesses about their actual benefits is vile in itself. Does not inform.

£60 000 tax free sounds about right.

They would get about £65 a week per child made up of child tax credits and child benefit, possibly £200 in wages assuming both women worked 16 hours a week, plus about £100 working tax credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit probably at least £120.

So with 11 children living in the house that would be well over £1000 a week cash, plus other benefits like free school meals.

I doubt it was £60k but £40k sounds more reasonable. CB, CTC and WTC for 11 children would amount to a fair deal a week.

Housing benefit, prescriptions, school dinners etc are all counted and should be as people on a salary dont say i earn x after excluding all these items.

I read something about how they came to that number last year it listed school meals, prescriptions, glasses, healthy start vouchers, something about cold weather payments (I thought they were for pensioners) and school uniform payments (also haven't heard of that) and a whole host of other things. I'm on the mn app just now so can't trawl the net for it but its online somewhere.

No free school meals if claiming working tax credit of course.

Some of those benefits can only be accessed via income support, which is practically impossible to get if someone in the ousehold is in work.

The only explanation for that would be benefit fraud, which given what we know about Mr Philpott isn't beyond the realms of possibility...

Mr.Philpott costs a fucking fortune

benefits
incarceration
court case
further incaceration
ongoing care for surviving children

so you are all way off the mark - the real cost of this example of sub-culture in the UK is hidden

I didn't really understand the amount that he apparently claimed in benefits either, if both women worked then surely he'd be a SAHD so wouldn't be entitled to that much in benefits?

Trying but failing to find link for that story listing all the benefits.

But ffs, people need prescriptions & glasses if they need them. It's not like you can swap spectacles for Sky & widescreen tellies in every room is it? (Is it?)

If the Telegraph is right about Mick losing £1k income when Lisa went, that £1k would probably include the school uniform (that's paltry anyway) & healthy start vouchers, too, so in the numbers I was coming up with.

The cold weather payments depend on actually having cold weather and are per property (I think). <a class="break-all" href="//Opensions-service.direct.gov.uk/en/cold-weather-payment/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">only had 2 qualifying weeks in this last (very cold) winter in DE24 (Philpott's postcode area, I think). So woohoo, another £50 a year. That really boosts the numbers (not).