House deposit saved up while cheating benefits

[PaulinesPenStash]

Firstly I want to say I am as left wing as they come, a card carrying member of the Labour Party, and i am in full favour of benefits for everyone that needs them.

But this is an absolute piss take ...🤦🏻‍♀️ I have just found out that someone I am close to, her partner (and father of her children) has been claiming to live at his mums for about 5 years. he's been working the whole time while living with her rent free and living off her income, and a bit of his. They've saved up enough for a house deposit as he's saved most of his earnings and they've just had an offer accepted on a house

I don't want to go in to how I know in case it's in any way outing, because let me be clear I would not want to grass the person up despite how disgusting i find it

I am just very shocked and really want to tell someone but I can't so I'm posting it on here to kind of get it off my chest

The deposit amount is £50,000 btw 🤦🏻‍♀️

(The one positive is it will free up a council house !)

Report.

This is a crime.

I work with people who genuinely need benefits, now have to rely on cloth and food banks, live in real poverty AND their services are getting cut ie children's centres, support workers, social workers sign off repeat referrals etc.

They need benefits when they don't meet the threshold but your friend and partner are frankly thieves.

Its sickening. I have people crying and no longer wanting to live and you have this absolute thief who things defrauding the state is a victimless crime.

Whats worse is reading some members here saying that its not that bad, theyve freed up a council house, or generalizing that people who stay in them could have other life outcomes and this isn't that bad.

Its a disgrace

ApplaJack no I don't not pay tax because I'm chronically ill but my husband s a higher rate taxpayer. I still say I wouldn't report without knowing the facts about where the Op got her information from. Something she's not bothered answering despite me asking.

If it's just hearsay then reporting if it's not actually true could have catastrophic consequences, so until the Op states where the info came from, I stand by not reporting.

Report them! Why would you not? They are thieves.

If OP reports it and it turns out not to be true, what are the consequences? They'd get found not to be doing anything wrong on investigation.

Sed me the details and i will report them !

Report report report, please report it

I am now nearly 2k in debt to tax credits because I was disorganised (yet honest) and told them 2 months after my partner moved in (the debt also includes an unrelated overpayment on their part).

Financially, it’s hard and it makes it even harder hearing this story.

It’s theft, they have committed benefit fraud, they are criminals. We’d all like 50k but unfortunately you can’t just help yourself

If it's reported and not true, her money gets stopped immediately anyway pending the investigation. However, if he isn't living at her house and certainly isn't contributing to the household income (quite the opposite if he's scavving off her pittance and stashing all his money away with no guarantee she'll benefit), I can't see how this is fraud in any way, shape or form.

On a side note, it's no wonder single mothers are reluctant to declare changed relationship status, especially if it's precarious, because of the disproportionate impact on any money they might receive.

No Apple as said above. All her benefits would be immediately stopped, she'd likely become homeless before it was sorted and she wouldn't be able to feed her children.

Hence me saying if you have concrete evidence then that's another story. But if it's just because you heard it from someone, then no you do nothing.

She had 50,000 in savings and they both have jobs. They don’t need the benefits. The benefits were used to save up £50,000. Without the benefits, they just live off their wages which would seem to be plenty.

Not great of them, but it would be horrible to report them.

I agree with you, Sootyandsweep. People who grass for anything less than mugging, house breaking, kidnap or assault are quite horrible.

It's hardly being a grass. Ffs.

I think the benefits system should be redesigned so that, as with tax, it's assessed on an individual basis, not household. You would receive an allowance for housing costs, and children, but it would be up to you what you spent it on.

Once your individual benefit was worked out, that would be it. Where you lived, who you lived with, what if anything you paid for housing, what income the people you lived with had would all be irrelevant.

Scams like this couldn't happen, there would no be no financial incentive for honest people to live apart, or dishonest ones to pretend they do. In fact there it would make financial sense for extended families or friends to live together as much as possible, so they could share household expenses and have more money left over.

AaaaaaarghhhWhereAreMyKeys
If the op did report it, you would still be £2k in debt and your benefits still muddled. It would do no one any good.

@PettyContractor there's a good argument for a Universal basic income that is similar to what you describe

I'm not doubting the OP's veracity but..... we live on benefits through necessity (disability) and for many of them we need to provide bank statements. Failure to do so means benefits get stopped.

I suppose I'm wondering how the OP's friends have managed to get around this. I know for a fact I needed statements for income support and housing benefit. Also council tax.

It would do no one any good

I disagree. If the fraud was investigated and the woman prosecuted then it would surely help act as a warning to others that they can't steal and get away with it. It may also be possible for the money to be reclaimed from the woman. If the OP is correct in her suspicions then there is £50,000 sitting in a bank somewhere that could be seized and returned to where it was stolen from.

@BishopBrennansArse

She claims as a single person, the money saved is not in her account it's in her partners, who the benefits don't know she lives with

So they could check her bank statements, there'd be nothing untoward

Ah Op you're back, I'm still waiting to know how you have this info in the first place?

She claims as a single person, the money saved is not in her account it's in her partners, who the benefits don't know she lives with

All the more reason to report it ASAP. If you give the authorities the information they might be able to get the money back.

Sorry to be thick
You mean they claimed Housing Benefit that they didn’t need?

No, the woman claimed as a single parent. If they had claimed as a couple, his earnings would have been taken into account and they wouldn't have been entitled to anything like as much, possibly nothing at all.

I honestly don't think it's worth reporting now, cohabitation is hard to prove retrospectively.

Bloody disgraceful though, and I'm one who thinks benefits are not enough and too difficult to claim.

I don't need to say how I know it, i think that's irrelevant. It will just detract from the subject / discussion

I can assure everyone it's true, and Posters can take it at face value, either believe it or not 🤷‍♀️

*£1.2BN - Benefit Fraud
£1.4BN - Mistaken Benefit Overpayment by the DWP
£16BN - Unclaimed Benefits that people are entitled to.
£30BN - Tax Avoided, Evaded and Uncollected.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.....*

Totally agree with you, and the imo the tax laws need rewriting in their entirety, but that's a subject for a thread in itself.

And underclaiming is huge. On one project I worked on, in one year I made over £1m in annual gains for clients who hadn't been claiming all they were entitled to. If only I'd been on commission!

People who commit benefit fraud and get away with it are one of the reasons that claimants are regarded as scroungers imo, which is one of the reasons I'd like to see people report when become aware of it, rather than just engage in scuttlebutt about this person and that person.

DP has a former in-law who's getting benefits, despite having received inheritances in the region of £700k over the last few years. If I knew their address, I'd report them myself.

OP how does she get CHB, tax credits and income support? They aren't paid out together. They are separate benefits, one is only paid to working parents.

What's being in the Labour Party got to do with it? They're parasites report them