Cherwell redundancy payments at highest level in ten years
04/08/2025
The Council spent £372,000 on its exit packages in 2024-25
by Esme Kenney, Local Democracy Reporter
A district council in Oxfordshire spent the highest amount in 10 years on redundancy payments to its staff.
Cherwell District Council spent £372,000 on all its exit packages to approximately 10 members of staff in 2024-25, new figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show.
Prior to this year, exit packages have ranged from £11,000 to £222,000 in the last decade, even though the approximate number of staff members who left was always 10.
The average exit payment for members of staff stood at £53,100 per person.
This is almost double the second highest figure £27,800 for 2021/22 when a similar number of people were made redundant.
A spokesperson for Cherwell District Council said: “It’s important to point out that £239k (or 64 per cent) of the figure quoted comprises pension strain, not monies paid directly to the members of staff.
“Pension strain describes lump sums which the council must pay into the affected employees’ pensions when they leave our service and start drawing their pension earlier than expected.
“These payments are made under the rules of the local government pension scheme, and they are separate from and different to the exit payments made directly to the employees.”
Staff members can take early retirement at 55 if they have been made redundant under the national rules of the Local Government Pension Scheme.
In 2021/22 the council spent £222,000 on exits packages, while in 2020/21 it spent only £11,000.
In 2017/18 it spent £165,000, £79,000 in 2016/17, and £81,000 in 2015/16.
Before this year, average exit payments per staff member ranged from £2,200 to £27,800.
The figures for intervening years have not been published to protect confidentiality in cases where only a few people were made redundant.
The council was also found to have owed residents more than £1.618 million in overpayments on council tax in a recent Freedom of Information request.
A total of 6,996 accounts have overpaid on their council tax in the last 15 years.
Oxfordshire County Council spent a record sum of £4.2 million on exit payments, amounting to an average of £65,000 per person.
Approximately 70 people left the authority in the last year.
The figures for Oxford City Council and South Oxfordshire District Council are confidential, while West Oxfordshire District Council and Vale of White Horse District Council made no redundancies or payments.
Elsewhere in the country, York Council paid £97,000 to members of staff who left in the last year.
The figures showing the people who were made redundant are rounded to protect confidentiality.
Published: by the Banbury FM News Team
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