'I was sick to my stomach' Woman loses inheritance after 'fraud' prosecution

Vivienne Groom never had so much as a parking ticket before she stood in the glass-paneled dock at Chester crown court last November.

- Josh Halliday

She was, she was told, in the same courtroom where Myra Hindley was jailed more than half a century ago for some of the worst crimes in modern British history.

Groom, 59, was being prosecuted for failing to declare her minimum wage job in a Co-op store. She worked there while caring for her elderly mother, Maud, who had dementia and had suffered a stroke - something she drew £60 a week carer's allowance for.

Using the Proceeds of Crime Act - a law normally reserved for major drug dealers the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wanted to punish this failure to declare the job by seizing the £16,105 inheritance Groom had been left by Maud when she died at 91.

A shy woman, the grandmother of four wept in the dock as she was told she faced up to seven years in prison for benefit fraud.

Groom worked 16 hours a week while caring for her mother when she first received the £60-a-week carer's allowance in 2014. She did not declare the job because she was told by a social worker she did not need to, she said, adding that it was an honest mistake.

Groom said she phoned the DWP to tell them she no longer wanted to receive the £60-a-week in carer's allowance when the Co-op increased her hours in 2015, a year after she began caring for her mother. A DWP call-handler, she said, told her: "We'll have to look into this and get back to you."