SOUTHEND Council paid out an eye-watering £1.8million to make staff redundant in the year to March - the most the authority has spent since records began.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government figures show around 60 people were made redundant by Southend Council in 2023-24.

This cost the council £1.8 million, at an average of £31,100 per redundancy package.

That is up from £662,000 the year before, and the highest figure since comparable records began in 2014-15.

The figures come just months after the Echo revealed one high-ranking member of senior management was given a pay-off of £176,295 in the financial year from 2022 to 2023.

The Local Government Association said councils were facing “significant financial pressures”, with the number of employees falling over the last decade.

It said councils require adequate funding and long-term certainty to meet rising costs and avoid more redundancies in the future.

Daniel Cowan, new Labour leader of Southend Council, said: “The changes to staffing made by the previous Conservative administration have had a very real knock-on effect to our services.

“It is more costly for us to rebuild these services than it is to transform and maintain them so the level of redundancies are a concern but we are still working through the long-term effects of this.”

Nationally, councils spent just under £200 million on redundancies in the year to March up from £183 million and the first rise since 2016-17.

A Local Government Association spokesman said: “The number of people working in local government has reduced in size over the last decade as councils continue to face significant financial pressures.

“In this context, councils make decisions based on their contractual and legal responsibilities when determining the level of severance or settlement payments made to their employees “Councils need adequate funding and longer-term certainty to meet rising costs and demand pressures and avoid more redundancies. This will also prevent exacerbating an already acute capacity crisis in some areas, with more than nine in 10 councils experiencing staff recruitment and retention difficulties.”

The figures also showed a record 380 senior employees were made redundant last year, costing councils £29.7 million, the highest figure since 2018-19.

Council finances have been significantly strained recently, with six councils effectively filing for bankruptcy since 2021. There had been just three between 2000 and 2018.