‘Overpaid’ councillors speak out after payment error

Councillors in Oldham are calling for more details after it emerged some had been ‘overpaid’ for three years due to an administrative error.

Several elected representatives claimed they would ‘pay it back in a heartbeat’ – if the council told them how much they owed. 

Oldham Council confirmed in July mistakes had been made on some annual allowances, which councillors receive in lieu of a salary. 

The council refused to name the exact figure that was overpaid.

But the executive team has commissioned an independent audit to forensically examine the error, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands, with results to be made publicly available. 

The lack of information has frustrated several councillors, who are worried about ‘looking complicit’ in what has been described as a council ‘c***-up’. 

“If they tell us how much we were each overpaid, I’ll pay back my share,” one Labour councillor, who didn’t wish to be identified, told the LDRS.

And  Lib Dem councillor Sam Al-Hamdani added: “I’m angry at the council for putting us in this situation where anyone would think we knew about the [overpayments].

“There’s no argument from us that we will pay back the money.

"We would pay it back in a heartbeat. But no one has told us how much we have actually been overpaid by.” 

The Lib Dem group, along with several other political groups including the Conservatives and the Oldham Group, have pledged to return the money and urged the council to ‘act promptly’ in revealing the details. 

Coun Al-Hamdani, who sits on the audit committee, added that he believed the council’s payroll system is in ‘an absolute mess’. 

External auditors have rated the system either ‘weak’ or ‘inadequate’ for seven of the eight last years, with a high turnover of staff and transitions between different IT systems cited as reasons for weaknesses, delays and failures. 

“Blame doesn’t lie with those currently in position,” Coun Al-Hamdani said.

“But with seven of the last eight years rated inadequate, you have to ask: why has it not been fixed?” 

The Saddleworth and Lees councillor is not the only one to raise the alarm on the council’s broken system.

Several councillors have reached out the LDRS with tales of mispayment – with one representative underpaid for six months, and another claiming he’d been overpaid by ‘thousands’ – but not been able to return the money. 

Asked about the payroll issues, an Oldham Council spokesperson said: “We are currently reviewing what happened here and will put measures in place to ensure that whatever the error was cannot be repeated.

"To ensure transparency, once the review is complete, it will be published and scrutinised by our audit committee.

“We cannot comment on specific cases but what we can say is that if an individual employee was paid money they were not entitled to – even if it was an error on our part – then, yes, they need to repay it as it is public money.

"However, any genuine financial hardship would be considered as part of a repayment plan.”

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