by Vivienne Groom had never had so much as a parking ticket before she stood in the impressive glass-paneled dock at Chester crown court last November.
She was told that she was 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 advertise her minimum wage job at a Co-op store. She then worked as a sole carer for her elderly mother who had dementia and suffered a stroke – for which she drew £60 a week in carer’s allowance.
Using the Proceeds of Crime Act – legislation normally reserved for drug dealers – the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wanted to punish this failure to advertise the job by handing over the £16,105 inheritance left Maud, the mother she cares for, seized. for, when she died at the age of 91 years.
Related: Carers were threatened with prosecution for minor breaches of UK benefits rules
A quiet woman, she 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 at the Co-op looking after her mother when she started receiving the £60 a week carer’s allowance in 2014. She did not declare the job because a social worker told her to. no need, she said, adding that it was an honest mistake.
Groom said she phoned the DWP to tell them she no longer wanted the £60-a-week carer’s allowance when the Co-op increased her hours in 2015, a year after she started caring for her mother . However, she said a DWP call handler told her: “We’ll have to look into this and get back to you.”
“And that’s it. I didn’t hear anything like that until last year,” she said, referring to the 2022 letter informing Groom that she was being prosecuted for benefit fraud: “They’re terrible at the phone. One woman said to me: ‘If you hadn’t done this, you wouldn’t be in this situation would you?’”
Related: Why are so many carers taken to court for benefit fraud?
The DWP has the technology to see when someone is being overpaid on carer’s allowance and should be able to let you know immediately. However, many carers are left to rack up huge bills and – like Groom – face the threat of criminal prosecution.
Groom admitted she had failed at the first opportunity and was paying £30 a month back to the DWP, but almost as soon as she received her inheritance from Maud after she died in 2021 – the government froze her bank account.
“I was sick to my stomach,” she said. “I called them and said: ‘You can’t take it, it’s my mother’s inheritance’ – and she said ‘Oh we can’ and that was it.”
In a hearing at Chester crown court in November, the judge, Steven Everett, appeared to accept Groom’s explanation that it was an honest mistake.
He said she found the claims process difficult to understand and that there were “no aggravating factors” but “a wealth of mitigating factors”.
“You were doing your best for your mother,” he told Groom, handing her a 12-month community order instead of jail.
Related: Who are the unpaid carers, and why have some had to repay large sums to the UK government?
The judge was appalled at the DWP’s handling of the case. He questioned why it took a year to come to court after Groom admitted their failure in an interview with benefits officers in November 2022.
The judge ordered the DWP to calculate how much of carer’s allowance Groom would have been entitled to if she had declared her part-time job at the Co-op, adding that it was “really disappointing” they had not done so.
But after two further court hearings before two different judges, the DWP still refused to calculate the difference – which would have meant Groom would have to repay a lower figure – and insisted he take the full £16,105 inheritance.
Last Wednesday, another judge – the fourth in six months – finally confiscated the family’s will. In a hearing that lasted barely five minutes, Judge Berkson said he understood that Groom has a “sentimental attachment” to the inheritance but that it still needs to be seized.
A DWP investigator, who was sitting at the back of the court, told the judge that the inheritance would be “with the CPS this afternoon” on signature. And then he was gone.
“I’m just shocked,” Groom said outside court. Her husband of 34 years, Geoff Groom, said: “Viv is now being punished for looking after her mother. The DWP are the criminals here. This can’t be right.”
Groom is one of thousands of carers who have been fined huge sums after unknowingly breaking earnings rules in a scandal condemned by a cross-party group of BP.
Speaking to the Guardian at their home in Tarvin, near Chester, Groom said the whole incident had been a “nightmare” that had left them “broken”. “I have never, ever, been in trouble with the police. Ever. It’s heartbreaking,” she said.
Another aspect of this is the huge power imbalance that leaves unpaid carers, often with very stressful care commitments, facing the power of the state without legal help.
Groom had no legal representation during the four court hearings to decide her fate. She was told she was not entitled to legal aid because of the £16,105 inheritance, even though the bank account had been frozen by the government so she had no way of accessing it. One solicitor wanted to charge £1,700 to represent her, well beyond the couple’s means.
“It was a nightmare,” she said last week. “I don’t know how we got through really, I really don’t.”
The DWP said: “We are committed to fairness in the social welfare system and protecting the public purse. Claimants have a responsibility to inform the DWP of any changes in their circumstances that may affect their award, and it is right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not happened.”
