A FORMER Blackburn school assistant who ran two benefits scams at once and netted more than £50,000 from the public purse is behind bars for 16 months.

Mother-of-two Tammy Whittle, 34, was in the middle of a six-year fraud, not owning up to the fact she was living with her partner, when she launched a second one, keeping mum about the fact she had started working, Burnley Crown Court heard.

Whittle, who was a dinner lady and a creche helper at St Joseph's RC Primary School, had last August been sentenced for a £4,800, 19-month campaign of dishonesty between December 2005 and May 2007, by magistrates.

She had been given a 12 month community order with 80 unpaid work after pleading guilty to failing to notify a change in circumstances.

She has now been jailed after admitting earlier eight allegations of making a false declaration to obtain benefits.

She had lied from the start in 2001, claiming she was a single mother when she was living with her partner, a taxi driver, and in fact married him during the scam.

Whittle was overpaid to the tune of £45,626.

Sentencing the defendant, of Billinge Street, Blackburn, Judge Beverley Lunt said it was almost ironic that she had handed in a reference from one of the employers she had worked for whilst claiming benefits illegally.

The judge said Whittle had admitted the £4,800 fraud when arrested in August 2007, but carried the other one on for another month.

She told her: “Your claim was through greed.

"That money was for people in dire financial circumstances and you took the money away from them.

"People who abuse the system in this way must understand they are going to go to prison."

The court was told Whittle was overpaid more than £24,000 in income support, £18,900 in housing benefit and £2,500 in council tax benefits.

Information came to light her partner was living with her and he had given his bosses her address as his home.

They had been living together since 1998, the claim was made in 2001 and the pair were married in June 2007.

The defendant was interviewed in April and June 2008 and said she and her partner had had temporary separations.

Hugh Barton, for Whittle, said she accepted she had been dishonest from the outset.

She became dependent on the money and could not give it up.