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Dudley Council spend £11m on job cuts within 12 months

More than £11 million was dished out by Dudley Council on employees' redundancy packages in just one year, it can be revealed.

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The Labour-controlled council said it was making at least 134 voluntary and two compulsory redundancies in the last financial year up to April.

And today bosses revealed they had spent £11.3m on redundancy packages over the period – almost £1m every month.

It is a sharp rise from three years before, in 2012/13, when the council spent £2.68m on redundancies.

In total, the council has spent £25m over the past four years.

Leaders at Dudley Council has blamed the rise in redundancies on 'unprecedented cuts' from central government.

But opposition councillors say the scale of the payouts and branded them 'small lottery wins' for senior staff.

Councillor Patrick Harley, leader of the Conservative Group in Dudley said: "A lot of the redundancy money has gone to senior staff who walk away with small lottery wins. They are mind-boggling figures. The man on the street would be scratching their head and thinking how can the council justify those figures.

"Thanks to our perseverance the council will be changing terms to the redundancies and will now only pay the statutory required amount. That is obviously a great welcome."

In 2013/14, the cost of redundancies was £3.248m, while in 2014/15, this figure rose to £7.737m.

Councillor Paul Brothwood, leader of the UKIP group in Dudley, said: "I think the council has too many middle managers and the management structure is an appalling waste of public money. We have to understand where redundancies are coming from."

Councillor Judy Foster, deputy leader of the council, said: "Like many other authorities across the country, we have faced unprecedented times in recent years as a result of significant cuts to funding from central government. In the last six years we have seen a £76 million reduction in funding, which is set to rise to £92 million over the next three years. We have therefore seen an increase in the number of redundancy payments. We are proposing changes to our severance arrangements in order to reduce redundancy costs."

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