A model train driver who fiddled £24,000 in benefits has been told he must repay the money or go to jail.

John Horton claimed benefits after giving up his job on the model railway at Trago Mills in Newton Abbot but failed to disclose he owned a second home in Kent.

He has now been told he must pay back the money within six months or face a 12-month jail sentence.

Horton, 52, left work to look after his sick wife at their home in Exeter but he claimed housing benefit and income support by lying about owning another property in Margate.

The value of that house meant he was not eligible to claim the means-tested benefits.

Horton, formerly of St Paul’s Close, Exeter, but now living in Margate, was found guilty of three counts of benefit at Exeter Crown Court in May and jailed for eight months, suspended for a year and ordered to do 140 hours unpaid community work.

He returned to the same court under the Proceeds of Crime Act where Judge Francis Gilbert QC ordered him to pay £24,828.86 within six months with a 12-month jail sentence in default.

Jonathan Barnes, prosecuting, said a financial investigation showed Horton’s available assets to be £96,821.82 and his benefit from crime to be £24,828.86.

He asked the judge to order that £11,742.54 be paid to the Department of Work and Pensions in respect of Income Support and £13,086.32 to Exeter City Council for overpaid housing and council tax benefits.

Sarah Vince, defending, said Horton did not dispute the order and the money would be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of one of the properties.

During a short trial in May the prosecution said Horton was deliberately dishonest when he ticked boxes in claim forms which declared that neither he nor members of his family owned property or assets.

Land Registry forms showed he bought the house from his mother and stepfather in 1990 and was still the registered owner.

When he applied for benefits in 2010 the flat in St Mildred’s Road, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, was worth an estimated £82,500 with an outstanding mortgage of £42,000.

Horton said he bought the flat from his parents but handed it back to them in 1994 when he got married and moved to Devon, where he lived in Heathfield, Newton Abbot, and ended up working on the model railway at Trago Mills.

He said his parents paid the mortgage and used the flat as part of a residential home they ran for young adults with learning difficulties.

He said he received no income from it, paid no mortgage or rates on it, and felt he had no financial interest in it even though it remained in his name.