£65m: what hard-up councils have spent paying off thousands of staff

SCOTLAND’S biggest councils have spent more than £65 million on redundancy payments over the past two years.

The largest, Glasgow City Council, accounts for nearly half the national total, having paid out £32.7m for voluntary early retirement between January 2009 and August this year.

In all, seven of the country’s main councils approved voluntary and compulsory redundancy payments totalling £65.79m to 4,034 staff, meaning they received an average of £16,309.

Numerous employees were given six-figure sums, with one successful applicant for voluntary redundancy at Renfrewshire Council getting nearly £135,000.

The disclosure of the vast payouts comes as public sector redundancies in Scotland are on the rise, with organisations slashing staff numbers to deal with the impact of cutbacks.

Figures released earlier this year showed councils, police forces and health boards had paid out close to £100m in redundancy and severance payments since 2008.

The latest figures, released under Freedom of Information legislation, found Glasgow, which has more than 20,000 staff and an annual budget of £2.4bn, had made the highest payouts so far this year in an attempt to balance the books, spending £9.9m.

It spent £16.1m on voluntary redundancies in 2010, while the highest single payment was in 2009, at £120,362.

A spokesman said: “Since January 2009, there have been 7,433 leavers; 2,030 of these employees left under voluntary early retirement. There have been no compulsory redundancies. Our current early retirement-voluntary severance scheme, in which around 2,600 are leaving the council, will save £44m from our wage bill every year.”

Edinburgh city council, where more than 130 staff have left, was the only local authority to release a breakdown of its expenditure of compulsory redundancy payments, setting aside £956,246 between January 2009 and this August, with a largest single settlement of £35,294 in July. It also paid out about £1.27m for voluntary redundancies, with a largest single payment of £101,542.

Renfrewshire Council was second only to Glasgow in terms of its spend on voluntary redundancies – some £14.2m. That includes £4.1m spent between January and December 2010 and £9.8m spent up to August this year. A total of 751 people have taken voluntary redundancy since January 2009, and the largest single payment was for £134,883 .

Aberdeen City Council spent £11.3m on 712 voluntary redundancies, with £43,916 being the largest single payment.

North Lanarkshire Council paid out £4.26m for 161 voluntary redundancy payments. It would not provide details on the number of staff who have left through compulsory redundancy, claiming the disclosure of the information would “contravene the data protection principles”.

Highland Council spent £1.1m to pay off 145 staff but said it could not separate payments for voluntary and compulsory severance. It added: “All staff received some level of payment within the highest and lowest figures which we have provided. Thirty-five individuals received a total of £286,052 between them in 2009. The highest single redundancy payment was £38,809 paid on 10 July, 2011, and the lowest paid out was £97 on 31 July, 2009.”

Dundee City Council paid out £822,654 on voluntary redundancy, of which the largest single payment was £12,000. It said no staff left through compulsory redundancy during the period.

Dave Watson, head of campaigns at Unison Scotland, said: “We shouldn’t be distracted by a small number of very high pay- offs. What is really concerning here is the impact that this exodus of people and experience will have on the existence and delivery of council services.”