Benefit fraud paid for children’s private education

A traveller who financed his children’s private education using £31,000 obtained in a benefits fraud was jailed for 18 months yesterday.

Matthew Newland, 41, from Lyne, near Chertsey, Surrey, drove a BMW car and paid £10,000 a year for his daughter to attend a prep school and £7,000 a year to educate his two sons, a jury at Guildford Crown Court was told. Newland claimed incapacity benefit, disability allowance, housing benefit, council tax benefit and income support, despite earning nearly £90,000 a year as a roofer while living in a static caravan owned by his mother-in-law.

Newland admitted five charges of fraud and was jailed for 12 months for each one, to be served concurrently, and six months for failing to surrender to bail, to be served consecutively. His estranged wife, Wendy, 40, had been earlier jailed for eight months for benefit fraud totalling £50,000.

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