Conservative austerity has been blamed for a raft of redundancies at Cumbria County Council.
Figures first obtained by radar show dozens of redundancies at the authority in the past 12 months.
The Figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show 77 exit packages amounting to £2.3 million in redundancy payments were handed out by Cumbria County Council between 2020 and 2021.
The previous year saw 86 staff let go by Cumbria County Council costing £2.2 million in redundancy payments.
Austerity from Conservative Governments has been named as one of the issues behind the redundancies.
The Association of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers has said that the cuts are symptomatic of austerity as they believe the Government is failing to see local councils as a priority.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “Severance pay is the responsibility of individual councils and we urge them to ensure that payments reflect value for money to the taxpayers who fund them.”
He added that the Government is committed to addressing excessive exit payments.
The figures came from the Government’s research into ending the “excessively high” exit payments within the public sector.
Labour Cumbria County Councillor for Mirehouse Mike Hawkins said: “I’ve been a councillor since 2006 and austerity has been with us since 2010 when the Conservatives came in. I’ve seen services being butchered for 10 years. If you cut council’s budgets you can’t provide as many services.
“Austerity doesn’t work, it’s all the people at the bottom that get hit hardest. David Cameron’s line was ‘we’re all in it together.’ He said that the issue is ‘social austerity outsourced to local councils.’
“And then when things go wrong who do they blame? It’s the local councils.”
