Ceredigion County Council laid off 39 members of staff by compulsory or voluntary redundancy in 2023/24 - all of which earned under £40,000 a year – while the number of employees who earn £60,000 a year or more ballooned to more than 100.

In the council’s statement of accounts for 2023/24, a report which will be laid before full council members on Thursday, 28 November, figures show that 39 members of staff were made redundant by the council as it struggles with a multi-million pound year-on-year financial black hole.

All of the staff that left earned under £40,000 a year, with no higher earners targeted for compulsory redundancies or ‘agreed departures’.

The total ‘exit packages’ for those staff was £434,000, the report shows.

The majority of the affected staff were among the lowest wage earners at the council, with 33 of the 39 earning less than £20,000.

Just eight members of staff – who were all earning less than £20,000 a year – left the council through redundancy programmes in 2022/23, costing a total of £94,000 in exit packages.

As low-paid staff lost their job amid budget cuts, the report shows that the number of Ceredigion council employees earning above £60,000 a year rose from 68 in 2022/23 to 109 in 2023/24.

That number includes all senior officers and the Chief Executive, Eifion Evans, whose pay in 2023/24 rose to £138,674 a year.

The total employee cost for Ceredigion County Council rose from just over £116m a year in 2022/23 to £123.6m in 2023/24, figures show.

With Ceredigion County Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy outlining that the council is facing a budget deficit without savings and tax increases of around £5m each year between now and 2027, more job cuts as services are stripped back are expected over the next three years.