\n Stephen Quirk, of Newton Street in Millom, pleaded guilty to not declaring savings of up to \u00a345,000 to the Department for Work and Pensions between January 2020 and October 2025 which would have impacted his application for Universal Credit.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Sessions House at Preston Crown Court heard this resulted in a total overpayment of \u00a330,044.55.\n<\/p>\n
\n The prosecution detailed there was a ‘significant period’ during which Quirk, aged 66, made ‘a number of claims’.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the time of the first application in 2020, he submitted that he had no present income but was found to have been in possession of capital in excess of \u00a330,000, which later rose to \u00a345,000 through inheritance and an insurance payment.\n<\/p>\n
\n The prosecution added: “Mr Quirk said he didn’t want to live off these savings and that he wanted to be comfortable in retirement.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The defence told the court that the sum of \u00a330,044.55 had already been paid back.\n<\/p>\n
\n They added: “He recognises the seriousness of the offending and the impact this sort of offending has on society as a whole – he accepted they were not honest actions.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He says in his interview: ‘I just want to be comfortable when I retire, I used to have nothing, I thought it would be nice to have something to rely on when I retire.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He appears somewhat isolated, so who is going to look after him when these medical conditions get worse, and the answer is himself, even if that is no excuse.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The defence outlined that Quirk had not adopted an ‘extravagant lifestyle’ due to the dishonestly claimed money.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He just says sorry and this is the genuine remorse of someone who is taking accountability.”\n<\/p>\n
\n His Honour Judge Andrew Jefferies KC gave Quirk a six-month prison sentence that was suspended for 12 months.\n<\/p>\n
\n Judge Jefferies commented: “You were claiming Universal Credit whilst you had a decent lump [of money] in the bank, in the hope of having enough money set aside for retirement.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We all wish we could do that but, as you recognise, this was not something you were entitled to.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The message has to go out that, if you defraud the benefit system, you have to go to prison – you, personally, will not be going to prison but the public has to see that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Quirk, of Newton Street in Millom, pleaded guilty to not declaring savings of up to \u00a345,000 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}