Renfrewshire Council has accidentally overpaid its staff more than £1.5m over the last five years.
While just over half the money has been recovered by the local authority, there is still more than £710,000 outstanding and more than £43,000 has been written off.
The figures were obtained via a Freedom of Information request.
Council bosses said a lot of overpayments occur due to delayed notification of an employee’s change in circumstances.
The local authority also said it has been starting to see improvement in its recovery rate and added that there was a plan in place to retrieve the cash.
A Renfrewshire Council spokesman said: “As acknowledged by Audit Scotland, large, complex organisations like councils will experience salary overpayments, mainly occurring from the delayed notification of an employee’s changes in circumstances.
“Since introducing enhanced recovery processes two years ago, we are seeing indications of an improvement in the recovery rate for both 2019 and 2020, with more than half of overpayments to employees recovered in full, and for the remaining cases the majority have an agreed recovery plan in place.”
Story by local democracy reporter Stephanie Brawn
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