A TEACHING assistant may have to sell her home to pay back benefits she received fraudulently, the city crown court heard.

Mother-of-two Helena Boyce wrongly claimed more than £27,300 in council tax benefit and income support.

Boyce, 34, of Acacia Road, Southampton , who is also a part-time dance teacher, received a suspended prison sentence after admitting one charge of failing to notify the authorities of a change of circumstances affecting her entitlement to benefit at an earlier hearing.

Tim Moores, prosecuting on behalf of Southampton City Council , said Boyce had applied for assistance on the basis she was a single parent with two dependent children.

However the authorities received a tip-off that her partner and father of her children had been staying with her.

Inquiries revealed he had various bank accounts and financial applications registered in her name and he was also paying the utility bills. His car was also registered at her address.

Mr Moores said: “There was a plethora of documentary evidence they had mixed finances and he was staying with her. Her claims were not fraudulent from the outset but carried out over a significant period of time.”

Learnt her lesson He added that under a previous confiscation hearing, her assets had been put at £8,380 and she had been given six months to meet the sum or serve six months behind bars in default of payment.

Judge Peter Henry gave Boyce a ten-week sentence suspended for 12 months and told her to carry out 200 hours unpaid work within the next year.

He said: “I would have taken a different view had you deliberately set out to defraud the authorities.”

The judge accepted they were not living together full time but she was reimbursing him for things he had paid out for the children and he was “unsuitable” to look after the children if she was jailed.

Matthew Scott, defending, described the couple’s relationship as “difficult” and confirmed she might have to sell her home to meet the confiscation order.

“She has learnt her lesson and has been living in terror of going to prison. If she gets a suspended sentence, it is inconceivable she will appear in court again,” he said.