Highland Council school staff overpaid because sickness absences were not recorded as audit finds £624,000 wrongly paid to past and present staff
A failure to properly record staff sickness absences at Highland Council may have led to some overpayments to staff, a new audit report has found.
This comes as the council’s overpayment of staff continues with £624,000 paid out wrongly to staff including 32 per cent to those who had left the organisation.
It marks at least the second year since we broke news of the overpayments more than 14 months ago when hundreds of staff were paid when they shouldn’t be.
In a review of financial arrangements in primary schools a “sample” of 19 headteachers were asked how budgets and absences are managed.
Of the 19 primary school headteachers just 10 regularly received reports on staff charged to their budget while nine did not.
There was also some uncertainty about how many of them did or did not check staffing reports on a regular basis.
The report stated: “One acting headteacher stated that sickness absences were not recorded in MyView [an online portal] and therefore not communicated to payroll.
“As a result, absence statistics and sick pay were not recorded and there was the potential for overpayments for staff on long-term sickness.”
The audit made three “high” priority recommendations: the first was that payroll should be immediately informed via MyView of staff absences for the school.
The second called for absences to be reviewed for overpayments, and finally that training of new and acting heads should prioritise the “recording and notification of sickness absence”.
The report added: “The headteacher concerned will be contacted to ensure that all staff absences for the school have been logged in MyView. Payroll will be contacted and asked to review any absence notifications to see if any overpayments have occurred.
“Training is already being delivered for new and acting headteachers, which includes absence management, this will be reviewed to ensure that the process of recording sickness absence is included.
“Consideration will also be given to including administrative and clerical staff in this training.”