A single mum convicted of falsely claiming housing benefit will have to spend the next 35 years repaying the £21,000 she conned out of Bradford Council.

Shabana Hussain, 29, appeared before Bradford magistrates today over money paid out to cover her rent for five years on a property owned by her former husband.

Under benefit rules she would not have been eligible for the handout if she had declared that the landlord was the father of her seven-year-old daughter and that she had once been married to him.

Hussain, of Brantwood Road, Heaton, has agreed to repay the Council at a rate of £12 a week, which will take until she reaches the age of 64 to pay off.

Yesterday she was made the subject of a 12-month community order with supervision and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work. She must also pay £976 in costs which will be taken directly from benefits.

The court heard how Moazam Ali Shah bought the property in September 2002 and shortly afterwards Hussain filled out the benefit claim forms and declared that neither she nor her daughter had any relationship past or present with Mr Shah. In the five years she filled out two application forms and three review forms in the same manner.

Dennis Schulman, prosecuting for the Council, said: “She ticked ‘no’ to the questions: ‘Is any member of the household, including children, related to the landlord’, and, ‘Have you been in any relationship with the landlord’.

“She failed to declare that the landlord was the father of her daughter Amira Hussain Shah, who was born in December 2000.”

The court heard the pair were married in May 2001 but the marriage annulled a short time later.

During an interview she said her parents had made Mr Shah provide a home for her when she got pregnant and that she believed the questions related to current relationships and did not refer to children.

Simon Hustler, for Hussain, explained how if she had been left alone the debt would never have arisen.

He said: “Miss Hussain wasn’t the person who brokered this deal and she never benefited from this arrangement other than having a roof over her head. The whole deal was managed by her former husband and her father.

“If they hadn’t intervened Miss Hussain would have legitimately been entitled to housing benefit anyway and I’m sure would have been a priority on any Council housing listing as a single parent.”

The property is now being repossessed with Hussain facing eviction.

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What really ****es me off about this story is the fact that this 'scroundging cow' is allowed to re-pay the money at a cost of £12 a week. It will cost us (the tax payer) more money going this way than if she gave more instead. ie i used to work in insurance and if we had made an overpayment on a file, there would be a minumum we can offer back a month as any less it would cost us more to cash the chq's or other method of payment!

I won't be surprised if she flees the country, the B-ITCH.

WHAT A SCANDAL!!!