A housing benefit fiddler has been ordered to repay £33,000 to Teignbridge Council or go to jail. 

Engineer Christopher Harris lied about owning a £125,000 home in Spain when he claimed housing and council tax benefits after returning to live in Britain and having no money to live on.

He has now been ordered to repay not only the £26,303 which he was overpaid, but almost £7,000 to cover inflation and interest since he committed the fiddle six years ago.

He made the false claims after he came back to Britain from Spain in 2009 after an attempt to start a new life there failed.

He returned with his wife to live in a council house in Exminster, near Exeter, but could not afford to pay the rent and started claiming housing and council tax benefit.

At the time the housing slump in Spain made his home there unsaleable and effectively worthless but when he finally sold it for £125,000 in 2011, he failed to declare the windfall.

The extra capital meant he was not eligible for the housing benefit any more and he fiddled £26,303 before he was caught in 2014, Exeter Crown Court was told.

He is now working as an engineer and his wife is helping to run a cafe and had already started making repayments before he was bought back to court under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Recorder Mr Llewellyn Sellick approved an agreed settlement in which the amount he benefited was set at £33,068 and his available assets were calculated as £44,918.41.

He set a term of a year’s custody if the money is not paid but Mr Martin Salloway, defending, said the amount will be paid within the three-month deadline.

In the original case Harris, aged 56, of Days-Pottle Lane, Exminster, admitted two offences of dishonestly failing to notify a change in circumstances and was jailed for 20 weeks.