MONMOUTHSHIRE council has paid out nearly £1.3 million in redundancy payments to school staff since 2011.

In 2012-13 it spent more money making non-teaching staff redundant than it did teaching staff – paying out £426,502.76 in total.

Of that, £214,761.98 was paid to 29 non-teaching staff. The other £211,740.78 was paid to 12 teachers who worked at Deri View, Monmouth, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Kymin View, Castle Park and Chepstow schools.

It is understood a statement clarifying how much Chepstow School has spent on redundancies in recent years will be given at Monmouthshire council’s meeting on Thursday.

At the last council meeting on June 25, the cabinet member for children and young people, Cllr Liz Hacket Pain, said the school had spent £426,000 on redundancy payments to staff in 2013-14.

But figures obtained by us show this was the total spent throughout the whole county, not the school.

The leader of the council’s Labour group, Cllr Dimitri Batrouni, said: “Part of the reason the Tory council plunged Monmouthshire into special measures for education was that elected members did not receive the information they needed to hold services to account. Yet here we go again. Now we know the answer the cabinet member did provide was inaccurate.”

Cllr Hacket Pain also said £369,000 was spent on payments to teaching and non-teaching staff in 2014-15 – but the authority has said those figures cannot be provided until the end of August.

In 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 it spent a total of £1,293,975.82 on making teaching and non-teaching staff redundant.

In 2011-12 it spent £323,874.84 on making 18 teachers redundant at Green Lane, Llanvihangel Crucorney, Chepstow, Caldicot and Monmouth schools. Another £174,391 was spent on making a further 19 non-teaching staff redundant.

While in 2013-14 £335,694.47 was spent making 18 teachers redundant from Durand, Caldicot, Monmouth, King Henry VIII and Chepstow schools. In addition 12 non-teaching staff were made redundant. In total, they were paid £33,512.75.