Cook claimed she was too ill to cut food

May 2 2008 by Chloe Griffiths, Liverpool Daily Post

A SCHOOL cook fraudulently claimed up to £80,000 by pretending she was too ill to cut up her own meals.

But weeping Kim Toner walked free from court yesterday after the judge took a “merciful approach” for the sake of her four children.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the 49-year-old, of Lyme Cross Road, Huyton, had been falsely receiving a string of benefits – including disability allowance – for more than five years.

At one stage, she even told the authorities she was too sick to cook her own dinner and needed someone else to cut it up for her.

But Charlotte Atherton, prose-cuting, told the court she had in fact been working as an assistant cook at Huyton’s St Edmund of Canterbury RC high school.

Her job included lifting heavy pots and pans, using industrial mixers and dishing out dinners to scores of pupils.

Ms Atherton told the court Toner had initially claimed the benefits legitimately after suffering nerve damage while working as a pastries cook in 1979.

However, in 2000, when she took up a job at the school, she continued to claim.

Miss Atherton said: “At the time she was working as a cleaner, she completed a form for disability living allowance. She said that she couldn’t cook for herself and even that she needed someone to cut her food for her.”

However, in 2003, Toner took up a new position as cook.

Toner, who since her arrest has been convicted of drink-driving, admitted five counts of failing to notify the authorities of a change in circumstances between October, 2001, and October, 2006, and asked for a further 167 to be taken into consideration.

But yesterday the depressed mother-of-four, who has since tried to kill herself, was spared prison after Judge David Aubrey, QC, told her he was “not a machine” and that he did not want to ruin her family.

Sentencing her to do 300 hours’ unpaid work, he said: “I am not a machine, I am not a computer. Sentencing in my judgment is an art. It is not mechanistic.

“The purpose of having judges rather than computers is to ensure sentences can be fine-tuned to the circumstances of each particular case, and that inevitably involves the exercise of judgment.”

He added that “exceptional circumstances”, including fears over the welfare of Toner’s nine-year-old daugh-ter, allowed him to take a “merciful approach”.

Placing Toner under supervision for 18 months and on a six-month curfew, he added: “Before me has been a crumbling woman, I am not prepared to crumble you further.”

Peter Davies, defending, said Toner, who submitted emotional letters from her children and priest, had claimed £13,000 of the benefits legitimately and an appeal is now under way.