Highland Council officers face questions about how they allowed payroll overpayments to reach over 600,000 PS.
After recovering about PS150,000 in overpayments, councillors on a committee of audit are investigating the possibility of recovering more than PS460,000.
Highland Council made 602 overpayments totaling 593 people after they left their organisation in February because the local authority did not check “to confirm the staff’s existence”.
Originally, it was stated that PS863,000 were overpaid.
Overpayments have been attributed to “late notification” of payroll changes.
It also said that the Scottish Council changed its financial systems in April. This caused problems in maintaining “consistent” data on the overpayments situation.
An officer from the council said: “We are committed to recovering all overpayments. We follow a uniform process for current and former employees.”
Staff at the council were told that they could choose a repayment plan prior to any deductions from their salaries.
The council officer said: “In cases where former employees fail to pay, they will be subjected to the standard debt collection process… and will eventually result in court actions.”
Councillor Jan McEwan stated that not returning the overpayment is fraud. She added: “It’s each individual’s duty to act quickly if there’s an overpayment.”
It’s not a few pennies, or pounds; it’s quite a bit of money and the workers have been overpaid.
Councillor Ruraidh Steward said, however, that some people felt intimidated by the way overpayments are collected.
He said, “This area is of great concern.” These are people who work for us, or have worked for our company.
I would ask officers to think about how they can contact staff in a person-centred manner to avoid this feeling of intimidation.
Allan Gunn, chief executive officer of communities and places at the Council of Ontario, denied that the process of recovering the money used by the council was intimidating. He said that “99.89% of payments were accurate” and that overpayments accounted for a small percentage of total payroll transactions.
He said, “I’ve not seen anything that suggests intimidation.”
A report on overpayments will be updated in June of next year.
Highland Council has more than 7,500 employees working full-time.
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