A MAN battling cancer who raked in almost £30,000 of hand-outs during a period of recovery from the disease has been locked up for four months.

Darlington plumber James O'Neill started claiming when he was diagnosed with cancer in early 2012 and was unable to work.

But following surgery and a recovery period, the 59-year-old went back to work - and continued to pocket the payments.

Between August 2012 and when he was interviewed in May last year, he received an overpayment of £29,832, a court heard.

O'Neill had been getting council tax relief and housing benefit from Darlington Borough Council and Employment Support Allowance.

His bank accounts showed "fairly large" sums being paid in regularly.

Shaun Dryden told Teesside Crown Court he later admitted: "I was skint and needed the extra benefits to keep going."

Ben Pegman, mitigating, said O'Neill's cancer had returned and was "not out of the woods yet".

He told Judge Sean Morris: "Had it not been for his diagnosis, it is unlikely he would have troubled the benefits system.

"He has worked since he was 16, and notwithstanding that return of the cancer, he is still working hard as a plumber."

Judge Morris told O'Neill: "Over the space of a considerable time, you carried on taking money off your fellow citizens while you were working, knowing full well you should not, even though you tried to lie your way out of it in interview.

"For every penny you took, somebody else who may have got cancer or may have been ill, the pressure on the state to pay them was all the more because what you were getting should have gone to the deserving, and instead it was going to you."

O'Neill, of Pease Street, admitted two charges of dishonestly failing to notify a change of circumstances at an earlier hearing.