Council defends huge redundancy packages (From Your Local Guardian)

Croydon Council defends £300k redundancy payouts

9:56am Thursday 28th June 2012 in News By Hannah Williamson

Croydon Council say they have made significant savings after reducing the number of senior management posts, despite paying more than £300,000 to four people in redundancy pay.

Yesterday it was revealed four senior officers had received the payouts after leaving their posts last year.

Stephen McDonald was recruited last August, but left his job as planning chief in February. He was paid more than £46,385 on his departure after just six months in the job.

Figures contained in an annual report which has just been made public, showed Mr McDonald's predecessor Emma Peters received a payment of £111,233 when she left.

Two other senior officers, Tom Jeffery the Executive Director of Planning and Environment and Damian Roberts, Step Change Director, were paid £141,847 and £48, 288 respectively.

Public services workers union GMB described the payments as "huge golden handshakes" and called for an investigation to be launched into the payments.

A spokeswoman for Croydon Council said: "The council's redundancy payments scheme was agreed with the trade unions so we are baffled as to why the GMB are questioning the application of a scheme they supported.

"Following a corporate restructure over the last 18 months the council has made significant savings from a reduction in senior management posts, which amounts to £1.3m a year.

"Although we cannot comment on the specific terms of individual cases, a significant element of the payments referred to relate to redundancy.

"The salary savings from deleting the redundant posts alone will save the council well over £250k per year, meaning a pay back to the tax payer in less than two years."