Sandwell Council has paid £280k to staff it made redundant only to go on and re-hire them, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

The Express and Star report:

Sandwell Council spent more than £280,000 on redundancies for 38 workers it later re-employed.

In January, the Express & Star revealed that other councils in the West Midlands and Staffordshire got rid of 354 staff and brought them back in, with their combined redundancy costs topping £3.5 million.

Today it can be revealed that Sandwell Council spent £282,769 on redundancies for 38 workers since 2008-09.

You can read the full story here.  

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.