MORE than £3m extra was spent by BCP Council on redundancy packages year on year, new accounts show. 

The local authority spent £3.618m on making 89 people redundant in 2023/24 - up from £630k and 21 staff in 2022/23. 

Of the 89 workers who left last year, 25 were compulsory redundancies and 64 were listed as ‘other departures agreed’. 

One of those made redundant was on a pay bracket between £180k and £200k and another earned between £140k and £160k.  

Read more: LISTED: How much money senior BCP staff earnt last year

BCP Council has insisted the job losses were necessary as part of the Three Town Alliance administration’s harsh cost cutting measures to balance the books. 

A spokeswoman for the authority added: “To do this, the council approved a £38m programme of savings, efficiencies and service rationalisations. 

“This included reductions in the headcount of the council from redundancies. A high percentage of these were voluntary in nature. 

“This programme continues the council’s transformation journey that started with Local Government Reform (LGR) where multiple teams were brought together into a large unitary council to deliver services across the conurbation more efficiently and effectively without impacting on service delivery.  

“BCP Council continues to invest in data and technology to improve the effectiveness of the services that it delivers which will result in a reduction to the workforce.  

“We have been transparent about this direction of travel and ensure to engage and consult with the workforce and wider stakeholders in the appropriate manner when these transformation milestones are reached.” 

The spokeswoman added further redundancies are to be expected over the next four years, as put in the agreed medium term financial plan (MTFP). 

She added: “However, the extent to which they will be needed will depend on the degree to which the current basic financial planning assumptions included in the MTFP change.” 

As reported in April, 330 BCP Council staff members put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy when asked. 

However, 206 of those applications were declined as the job losses would have meant BCP Council couldn’t fulfil its statutory duties and targets. 

In 2021/22, 48 jobs were axed at a cost of £2.203m and the year before that, it was £2.948m.