March 1, 2011 4.11 pm This story is over 162 months old

County Council has pricey £1.8m breakup

Expensive: Managers at the County Council received over £15,000 more than their annual salary in redundancy pay.

Lincolnshire County Council has paid £1,860,990 to in order to make just 24 senior managers redundant, according to figures from the council.

The figures were originally obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) by the anonymous Watching Lincolnshire County Council blog.

In October 2010 the County Council said it would cut 35 of its senior posts in a bid to make savings worth £3.5 million following the central spending review.

The authority made redundant 24 of the senior managers until January 2011, a breakup which cost the County Council just shy of £2 million.

Out of the 24 individual redundancies, 15 are working their notice periods.

The average pay of the managers concerned was £61,000 per year. On average, each of the 24 managers received £77,542 redundancy pay.

The County Council claims savings from the redundancies plus proposed savings for PAs and secretaries every year will slightly exceed £3.5 million.

With 59 senior posts left, the County Council believes the new structure would help move more money into priority and front line services.

Lincolnshire County Council will make 818 people take voluntary or compulsory redundancies, the equivalent of about 607 full-time jobs.

Around £15 million has been put aside for redundancies payouts, with the largest reductions in children’s services, where the majority of staff are employed.

Overall, the Lincolnshire County Council has to save £125 million over the next 4 years because of a 28% reduction in government grants and increased cost pressures.