A couple are accused of being involved in a £70,000 benefit fraud.

Lisa Wallace, 39, is alleged to have dishonestly claimed she was a single parent while failing to declare she lived with her partner, Sean Pryer.

The mother-of-three, of Wilfrid Road, Hove, is charged with nine offences claiming she fraudulently claimed housing benefit from Brighton and Hove City Council and income support from the Department of Works and Pensions.

The court was told that the offences were committed between 1990 and 2007.

The total overpayment in housing and council tax benefit and income support she allegedly received between 1999 and 2007 is £72,049.94.

Wallace did not enter a plea to the charges during a hearing at Brighton Magistrates’ Court.

Pryer, 40, who lives at the same address, denied a charge of aiding and abetting his partner to falsely state in a claim application in March 2007 that he had moved in with her a month earlier when they had been living together since 1995.

Magistrates bailed the couple until September 8 when the case will be committed to the crown court.