Couple claim £70,000 in bank belongs to friend (From Tewkesbury Admag)

Couple claim £70,000 in bank belongs to friend

A VALE couple who claimed that £70,000 found in bank accounts in their name belonged to a friend went to the Court of Appeal last week in an effort to have their state benefits restored.

Hard-up Arthur and Shirley Smith of Ferry Lane, Offenham, said the money was the life-savings of family friend Phyllis Gordon - and told the court they faced financial ruin after officials stopped their income support payments.

Barrister Alison Meacher told Lord Justice Brooke that Mrs Gordon had asked the Smiths - who are illiterate - to look after her money "on trust" because she was scared her alcoholic husband or drug-troubled children would take it from her.

Mrs Gordon, of Landsdown Close, Malvern, wrote a number of letters to that effect, but in August last year a social security commissioner rejected the Smith's case and backed a 2003 decision to stop their income support.

After listening to legal argument, Lord Justice Brooke adjourned the case and gave the Smiths more time to seek help from lawyers to try to establish the money is not theirs.

He also said the Department for Work and Pensions should be represented when the hearing resumes in the summer.

The judge said that Mr Smith, who had to retire from his job as a farm hand more than 10 years ago, and his wife were found to have more than £70,000 in their names when they were investigated by the Department for Work and Pensions.

He added that Mrs Gordon, whose daughter is married to the Smith's son, claimed she gave them the money to keep it away from her family.

"Mrs Gordon did not have any confidence in keeping her money in an account in her name because she had an alcoholic husband and her children took drugs," he said.

At previous hearings it was found that Mrs Gordon, a cook at Malvern Boys College, did not earn enough to reflect the four-figure lump sum transfers made into the accounts on a number of different occasions over the last 20 years.

However, she said her father gave her some of the money and she trusted her friends enough to take care of it.

"When I asked Shirley and Arthur to open these accounts for me I had no idea I was breaking the law," she wrote to the court.