Council spend £21m paying off redundant staff over six years

[dutchman]

Coventry council has paid out £21million in redundancy payments in less than six years - and there’s more to come.

Figures obtained by the Telegraph via a Freedom of Information request show that the council has made 1,423 non-school staff redundant since April 2010 at a cost of £20.9m.

That works out at an average pay off of roughly £14,688 each - although payments to individuals would vary depending on length of service and level of wages.

The numbers also show that two per cent (31) of the people made redundant in that time later returned to work for the council despite having received a pay-off.

However, since 2014 the council has changed the rules and any employee leaving with a redundancy payment cannot return for a period of five years.

Job cuts at the council are far from over, with at least another 1,000 planned job losses by 2019 confirmed last month.

The council has blamed cuts on a reduction in government funding which will see the authority’s annual grant cut by a predicted £130m by 2020 - a 40 per cent drop from 2010.

There are also indications remaining council staff could suffer after Labour Coun Damian Gannon, the council’s cabinet member for finance, told the Telegraph the authority was looking at altering employment terms such as holiday and sickness pay.

Speaking about the costs of redundancy, he said: “£21m is a lot of money, but they’re one-off payments which mean we can achieve ongoing savings which ensure we are in a stable position going forwards.

“We have also avoided large levels of compulsory redundancies through early retirement and voluntary redundancy schemes.”

Asked if the number of people re-joining the organisation having received a pay-off was too high, he said: “It depends on the circumstances.

“If we are paying redundancy to them, and they walk back into a job the next day, that is not good value for money.

“If people have some expertise we might want them back on a short-term basis.

“But we don’t want people coming back full-time because that makes a mockery of our attempts to balance the books.”

He added: “We are having to look at increasingly controversial areas to make savings. We are looking at employees terms and conditions and we expect to be able to release details in the summer.”

[rebbonk]

Sounds like the usual trick of making people redundant and then taking them back on as self employed 'consultants' has been going on to some extent.