West Northamptonshire Council spent more than £1 million making staff redundant last year

West Northamptonshire Council spent more than £1 million on staff redundancy settlements last year, new figures show.

New data from the Department for Levelling Up and Communities shows the council spent £1,225,000 to make 64 staff members redundant in the year to March 2023.

Each package had an average cost of £19,000 each.

The council made a total of 33 redundancies the year before, at a cost of £2,378,000.

It spent £1,225,000 more than in the year to 2020, when its bill for redundancies was £0.

Nationally, over £185 million was spent on staff redundancies by councils across England, the lowest annual amount in nine years. Last year just over £214 million was paid out to departing employees.

The number of staff taking redundancy also hit the lowest point since 2014, with over 7,800 exit packages agreed, at an average cost of £23,000. This was a slight increase on last year, when the figure was £22,000.

Cllr Jonathan Nunn, Leader of West Northamptonshire Council, said: “Redundancies are a last resort, and we do our best to ensure that they have the smallest impact possible on the service we provide to residents and businesses in West Northamptonshire.

“As a new council which has merged four legacy councils together, we have undertaken restructuring exercises across our departments, in order to bring the efficiencies and savings that the unitary process promised the tax-payer it would make. This has resulted in some of the redundancies identified over the past few years.

“However, making people redundant is never an easy thing to do, and anyone affected has the right to expect that, where appropriate, they will be compensated in line with their contractual rights to a redundancy payment, and the statutory obligations that all employers have under employment law.

“Any potential costs associated with proposed redundancies are considered against the ongoing savings that can be made, as part of the wider business case, whenever the council considers proposals to make changes to staffing.”