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04
Aug
Council employee received £303,000 in redundancy payout
A North Yorkshire Council employee received a redundancy package of £303,000, according to an authority report.
According to the authority’s recently published draft accounts for 2024/25, the unnamed employee received the highest exit package made in the time period.
Meanwhile, the total payouts for exit packages increased year-on-year.
Payments climbed from £1.756 million in the 2023/24 financial year to £2.818 million last year, according to the report.
The Stray Ferret asked the council who and what the £303,000 payment to a member of staff was for and why the overall figure for exit packages increased.
Trudy Forster, assistant chief executive for business support and human resources at the council, said:
Due to the new council’s launch, redundancies to reduce duplication, management costs and protect key local and frontline services, particularly those that support the most vulnerable in our community, have always been expected.
Exit packages have increased because we have to make the payments under policy set out legally and contractually.
This payment relates to a post that was made redundant as a result of local government reorganisation. We have to account for redundancy payments which are paid to individuals, plus pension entitlements under the former employee’s contract.
Only £40,000 of the overall figure was a direct redundancy payment to the officer, the remaining £263,000 is a pension related cost which is payable to the Local Government Pension Scheme rather than any individual.
Loss of government funding
The payments come at a time when the council is seeking to make savings due to a loss of government funding.
As previously reported, the council faces a £4.9 million shortfall in the 2025/26 financial year and has warned this could rise to £34.4 million by 2027/28.
In previous years, the council has sought to restructure its staff which included making some former district council staff redundant in order to make savings.
In February, the Stray Ferret reported that the authority paid a single employee a £322,000 redundancy payment in 2023/24.
The Stray Ferret submitted a freedom of information request to the authority requesting the name of the employee and the position they held — however it declined to reveal the information.
As a result, the Stray Ferret requested an internal review of the decision as we felt that the public interest outweighed the reason for exemption and that the that the council had a duty to be transparent.
However, the authority upheld its original reasons for refusing to disclose the information.
The council said that it felt that there was “no lawful basis” for disclosure of the identity of the employee and that the information disclosed in its statement of accounts met the “legitimate interest of transparency”.
The Stray Ferret has since taken the decision to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates Freedom of Information and data protection.
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