TOWN hall bosses have been slammed for re-hiring former staff weeks after handing over redundancy packages at taxpayers’ expense.

Last year Blackburn with Darwen Council axed around 1,000 jobs, making around 100 compulsory redundancies as part of £33million spending cuts.

It is understood one member of staff, a market supervisor, was made redundant last June and given severance pay, but then re-employed as a road sweeper within weeks.

Council chiefs said employees who were made redundant were free to apply for externally advertised jobs once a minimum of 30 days had passed after their departure.

But critics said such a practice would be unlikely in the private sector, and accused the council of failing to ‘get the best’ out of taxpayers’ money.

Sources at the town hall confirmed that in the past 18 months there had been a ‘handful’ of cases where former staff had been re-hired after being paid redundancy packages.

A spokeswoman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said the council should have done its utmost to find other roles for the employees before giving them severance packages.

She said: “What the council has done might be within the rules, but it does not seem to be in the spirit of getting the best out of taxpayers’ money.

“A lot of councils have to find millions of savings and that will mean some redundancies, but it is clearly not good value for taxpayers’ money to make people redundant and hire them back in other roles.”

Staff made redundant by Blackburn with Darwen Council are paid a maximum of 30 weeks’ pay in severance.

Coun Andy Kay, executive member for resources, said: “Of course, as in any organisation, some vacancies have subsequently come up in front-line services which needed to be filled.

“We have tight recruitment controls which mean any such opportunities are retained for any suitable staff remaining at risk of redundancy.

“If vacancies are not filled internally by staff at risk of redundancy, we would recruit externally but it would not be right for us to bar anyone, especially those with previous experience and skilled employees from applying for and obtaining these positions.

“If an employee was made redundant and was then re-hired within 30 days they would not be entitled to redundancy payments and we would consider them to have continuous employment.”

“Alternatively if the break in service is beyond 30 days their service with the council is broken and they would be treated as a new employee.”