Leeds City Council has accidentally overpaid its staff more than £2.4m over a five year period.
While the numbers show the vast majority was recovered by the authority, more than £160,000 of overpaid salaries had to be ‘written off’.
The council claims many of the errors were made when an employee leaves or changes hours and that it was making improvements to payroll services.
It added while every effort is made to recover money overpaid to staff, ‘fair agreements’ had to be reached when it came to employees paying back overpaid wages.
A statement attached to a freedom of information request read: “Leeds City Council provides payroll services to over 45,000 employee records including schools.
“Payroll errors can unfortunately occur generally as a result of notifications being received after payroll deadlines and/or payday. Improvements to this are on-going.”
According to figures from Leeds City Council, ‘recoverable payments’ adding to a total of £2,410,156 were made from the 2014/15 to 2018/19 municipal year.
The largest amount overpaid was in 2015/16, when the council had overpaid £545,737 on staff wages.
The total amount ‘written off’ during this same period was £161,713, meaning the authority had recovered more than 93 per cent of over-payments to staff.
The FOI statement added: “Where these payments do occur recovery processes are in place.
"The council has a duty to recover as this is essentially public money and if we don’t this will impact on service delivery and ultimately on the services we offer to the citizen of Leeds.
| Year | Total of recoverable payments made | Write off | % not recovered |
| 2014/15 | £482,951 | £28,685 | 6 |
| 2015/16 | £545,737 | £17,768 | 3 |
| 2016/17 | £490,633 | £60,587 | 12 |
| 2017/18 | £478,084 | £21,907 | 4.5 |
| 2018/19 | £412,751 | £32,766 | 8 |
"We are however mindful of employee financial well-being and make every effort to reach a fair arrangement when recovering funds.
“Normally all recovery is made through payroll however where an employee leaves employment the council's debt recovery section is involved.
“After recovery procedures are exhausted and every attempt is made write off arrangements may then be considered.”
An additional statement from the council claimed that, if an employee is still working for the authority, the overpayment was usually recovered ‘in full from the next salary’.
If an employee has left the council, it would contact them and recover the money via a card payment over the phone.
It added: “In cases where all other avenues have been exhausted, the matter may be referred to a debt recovery agency.”
The council has also said it is improving its payroll system, including better communication to managers and schools.
The statement read: "Each month, the council has a payroll deadline. Managers within the council need to instruct the payroll department of payroll changes, including employees leaving organisations or changing hours, before the deadline, so that the payroll department can make the necessary changes to the employee’s pay.
“If we receive this information after the deadline, it can result in an employee receiving pay after they have left, or an employee still receiving payment for hours they no longer work.
“Once we receive the notification, if an overpayment has been made, we will commence recovery action to reclaim the overpayment.
Among the improvements, the statement listed initiatives such as payroll deadline reminders going out to staff, as well as moved to give managers a greater role in imputing changes. It added transactions could now be done over the phone.
The statement concluded: “We have improved our correspondence to those receiving overpayments to apologise for the error which may not be their fault and explain the reasons for them (eg. late notifications from their managers), why we must recover the funds, and how they can repay.”
