Islington Council has spent a staggering £3m making nearly 250 people redundant over the last three years, new figures obtained by Islington Now have revealed. One senior employee received a ‘golden handshake’ of over £124,000.
The council made a total of 244 people redundant in the past three years costing £3,016,418. In 2008/09 112 people were made redundant with £1.3m in payouts, the following year there were 64 redundancies costing over £1m. So far this year 60 people have been laid off, with payouts of more than £650,000.
The figures, released after a Freedom of Information request by Islington Now, also reveal that in this period 14 staff received payoffs of more than £40,000, with one senior figure taking a one-off payment of £124,278 and another getting £96,248.23.
The revelations come only weeks after the passing of a budget which will see the council shed up to 700 more posts – equating to more than one in five of its 3,400 staff – as it grapples to save £100m over the next four years. Last month the council’s budget allocated £6.2m from its reserves for these redundancies, with the majority of losses expected to be made over the next year.
Jane Doolan, secretary of the Islington branch of the Unison trade union, said she was “surprised” by the high figures, adding that they were were “only the beginning” and that millions more of taxpayers’ money would be spent in paying people to leave.
Ms Doolan claimed the outlay showed the need to find alternatives to redundancies. “My view is that if they can actually re-employ people then that is the most important thing. To keep people in work will keep down the cost of redundancy. Let’s face it, most people want to keep their jobs, they don’t want to be made redundant.”
The high payouts to individuals were criticised by Emma Boon, campaign director at The TaxPayers’ Alliance, who accused the council of sanctioning “golden goodbyes”.
“Of course employees need to be paid what they are legally entitled to if they are sadly made redundant,” she said.
“But it is worrying that Islington has spent so much in just three years. The council must be open about any discretionary payments made to departing staff and taxpayers should have a say, so that over-generous golden goodbyes aren’t being signed off behind closed doors.
“It is crucial that the council keeps one-off fees to a minimum and any payments should be justified to taxpayers,” she added.
The council said the redundancies were unfortunate but necessary. Phil Kelly, chair of the council’s Audit Committee, said he accepted that high payments might be hard for taxpayers to accept but claimed they were kept to an absolute minimum.
He said: “Redundancy payments are individuals’ contractual requirements. It is the rule of law. Obviously we will try and minimise them by looking for alternative employment where possible. I am sure that redundancy payments are kept to the absolute minimum that is necessary to achieve organisational change.”
