Buckinghamshire spent more than £1 million on staff redundancy settlements last year, new figures show.

The Local Government Association said unlike the civil service councils have seen their workforce shrink while facing "increasing demand for services", and called for a rethink of Government funding to combat "severe budget pressures".

New data from the Department for Levelling Up and Communities shows the council spent £1,591,000 to make 60 staff members redundant in the year to March 2023. Each package had an average cost of £27,000 each.

The council made a total of 65 redundancies the year before, at a cost of £2,420,000.

It spent £1,591,000 more than in the year to 2020, when its bill for redundancies was £0.

Nationally, over £185 million was spent on staff redundancies by councils across England, the lowest annual amount in nine years.

Last year just over £214 million was paid out to departing employees.

The number of staff taking redundancy also hit the lowest point since 2014, with over 7,800 exit packages agreed, at an average cost of £23,000.

This was a slight increase on last year, when the figure was £22,000.

Cllr Pete Marland, chair of the LGA's Resources Board, said: "Despite increasing demand for services, local authorities also face challenges in getting the right people into the right roles, such as in children’s services, adult social care and planning.

"Our own workforce survey shows 94 per cent said they were experiencing recruitment and retention difficulties."

He added: "Only long-term, consistent funding from central government will be enough to meet inflationary pressures and the rising costs of the National Living Wage, on top of increasing energy and other costs, if we are to avoid more redundancies and prevent exacerbating an already acute capacity crisis in some areas."

Buckinghamshire Council explained the costs it pays are in line with those of "similar organisations."

Tim Butcher is Buckinghamshire Council’s Deputy Cabinet Member for Resources. He said: “In any large organisation such as Buckinghamshire Council, our staffing evolves with the ever-changing needs and priorities of the business.

"As part of becoming a single unitary council, we have created efficiencies through systems and processes – namely our five year Better Buckinghamshire programme which launched in 2020. As part of our ongoing change processes we look to redeploy staff where we can; however there will be instances where the changes result in redundancies.  The costs we pay are in line with those of similar organisations.”