A DAD-OF-FIVE who fraudulently claimed £24,000 in benefits while earning £50,000 a year has been spared jail.

David Comer, 50, started claiming income support, incapacity benefit and council tax in 2004, but failed to tell benefit agencies when he started work as a contracts manager for an electrical firm in July 2005.

Mark Savage, mitigating, said Comer had agreed to pay back £400 a month.

Yesterday, at Basildon Crown Court, Judge Rupert Overbury deferred Comer’s sentence for six months to see if he genuinely intends to repay the cash.

Judge Overbury told the defendant: “People in your position who steal, which is exactly what you have done, ordinarily go to prison.

“It seems to me, bearing in mind you are a person of previous good character, that the public may benefit more by you repaying the money rather than my passing any other kind of sentence which might deprive the public and benefit agencies of that money.

“You have got a job now and you are earning extremely good money.”

Comer, of Mayflower Road, Chafford Hundred, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to three counts of failing to notify a change of circumstances.