Highland Council officers are facing questions over how payroll overpayments have been allowed to stretch to over £600,000.
Councillors on an audit committee are looking into the potential recovery of more than £460,000 in payroll overpayments after about £150,000 had been recovered.
In February, it was revealed that Highland Council had made 602 over-payments to a total of 593 individuals after they left the organisation because the local authority was not checking “to confirm the existence of its staff”.
Originally it was reported that £863,000 had been overpaid.
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“Late notification” of changes to the payroll team has been identified as a cause of the overpayments.
The Scottish council also changed financial systems in April, which caused issues in keeping “consistent data” on the overpayment situation, it said.
A council officer said: “We do seek to fully recover all overpayment sums and we follow a consistent process for staff and former staff members.”
Council staff have been told they would be given the option of a repayment plan before any salary deductions would be made.
The council officer added: “In the cases of former employees, failure to pay will go through the standard debt recovery process … and so will ultimately result in court action.”
Councillor Jan McEwan said not paying back the overpayment was fraud, adding: “It should be each individual’s responsibility if they’ve got an overpayment to react quite quickly.
“It’s not pennies or pounds we are talking about; it’s a lot of money, and they’ve been overpaid.”
However, councillor Ruraidh Stewart said that some individuals felt intimidated in the ways overpayment collection is being conducted.
He said: “This is an area of great concern. These are people that work for us or have worked for us.
“I would perhaps ask the officers reflect on how to contact staff in a more person-centred way to avoid these feelings of intimidation.”
Chief executive officer for communities and place Allan Gunn denied that the council’s process for recovering the money was intimidatory and said that “99.89%” of payments made were accurate and the overpayments were a small amount of the total payroll transactions.
He said: “There’s nothing that I’ve seen to suggest of intimidation.”
An additional report will be prepared for June next year with an update on the status of overpayments.
Highland Council employs more than 7,500 full-time equivalent staff.
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