A UNION representative has been spared jail after a court heard how she claimed more than £29,000 in benefits she was not entitled to.

Benefit cheat Catherine Garrod was paid employment and support allowance and incapacity benefit for five years until September 2018, wrongly telling the benefits agency that she was not working.

In fact Garrod had a job at Manchester Airport and in addition, was being paid expenses by the GMB union for her role as a union representative.

At Bolton Crown Court Michael Blakey, prosecuting, told Judge Graeme Smith that Garrod was legitimately claiming incapacity benefit from July 7 2008 but should have informed the authorities when she obtained work at the airport on September 4, 2013.

Instead she kept pocketing the benefits as well as her salary, netting a total of £29,453 extra until the benefits were stopped on September 23 last year.

"She failed to declare that she was working at Manchester Airport and also that she was receiving expenses from one of her appointments in that job, a union rep for GMB," said Mr Blakey.

"Each year a letter had been sent to her saying how much benefits were going up by and 'if there are any changes in your circumstances, please notify the department'.

"She said she just didn't tell the department. She had been dishonest, she said, but not intentionally dishonest."

The court heard that 35-year-old Garrod, of Woodhill Street, Bury, is a single mother-of-three who is expecting another baby and has no previous convictions.

She pleaded guilty to two counts of benefit fraud.

Kevin Liston, defending, told the judge: "She is a lady who has a catalogue of personal medical problems.

"She struggles to manage both herself and, particularly her finances."

He added that she had emailed HMRC to inform them that she was working but not the Department of Work and Pensions.

He said: "In her mind she had notified a Government agency of that position. However she concedes that she did not notify the correct agency and did not fully disclose the extent of the hours being worked and being asked in a telephone interview in 2017, was she working, she said no."

Judge Smith commented: "She notified the one agency it benefitted her to do and not the agency it didn't benefit her to do."

Mr Liston replied: "Your Honour perhaps gives her more credit for understanding the system than was perhaps otherwise present."

Mr Liston added that Garrod, who is staying with her ex-partner, has started repaying the money she wrongly took.

Sentencing Garrod to 25 weeks in prison, suspended for two years as well as ordering her to participate in 12 days of rehabilitation activities, Judge Smith told her: "This was initially a good claim for benefits that changed in 2013 and became a claim to monies to which you were not entitled.

"As you know, that essentially means that just over £29,000 has gone to you which otherwise could have been used by the state for other legitimate purposes.

"It's clear to me you do have a complex medical history and one which goes some way to explaining the circumstances that have led to the commission of this offence.

"I am not going to try and act as an amateur psychologist but it does appear that you have misunderstood in a significant way your responsibilities to the extent that, it seems to me, you have closed your eyes to the obligations that you had."