£1,255 sent to the vicar - by mistake

A PRIEST was left astonished after a mistake at Cambridgeshire County Council left her with a £1,225 windfall.

Katy Dunn, Minister of Buckden Methodist Church, who lives in Hilton, said the money had never been intended for her and was shocked the council could make such a mistake.

"It's very nice, but it's not my money," she said. "I am completely baffled as to how the county council had my details."

Mrs Dunn received the cheque in last Wednesday's post and immediately contacted the county council to tell officials of their mistake and return the cheque.

An official told her that the cheque was a direct payment and that her reference number was just one digit away from that of the person for whom the money was intended.

But Mrs Dunn, a mother of two teenage daughters, and the wife of Richard, an information scientist, told The Hunts Post: "I am very surprised because this is public money and I think people should know that this kind of mistake can be made.

"This is a direct payment. I have never received direct payments and no one in my family has. The only payments I receive are for keeping the Huntingdon wedding register and that is an entirely different department. It is not paid to me centrally by the county.

"I have no idea why my details are on their system."

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire County Council said: "This is a mistake of imputing. The typing is done by hand and not by a computer. We have checks and balances in place so that the mistake would have been discovered before long. We would have noticed the error.

"We make 700,000 payments in a year and mistakes are very rare. At some time Mrs Dunn must have been on our system as a service user or a service supplier.

"We are very grateful to her for coming forward immediately because that is somebody out there's money.