FSA has made £1.4 million in redundancy payments over last four years

FCA_logoIt emerged today that the Financial Services Authority has paid out over £1.4 million in redundancy payments over the last three years of its life.

The reports come in the wake of a number of controversies in the civil service, the BBC and the NHS relating to the nature and size of redundancy payments made to ex-employees.

The organisation, which has recently been split into two and re-named the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, apparently spent £1,476,898 on redundancies between 2009 and 2012, with over 30 staff being made redundant over the last 3 years. This equates to an average of £50,000 per employee. The Financial Conduct Authority, responding to a Freedom of Information request, did not specify individual redundancy packages but instead broke them down into categories of staff. These categories showed the following:

  • Administrators and associates made redundant received a total payout of £749,889
  • Managers made redundant received a total of £256,935
  • Directors made redundant received a total of £255,000
  • Heads of departments made redundant received a total of £181,235
  • Technical specialists made redundant received a total of £36,839

It also emerged that 11 employees had been dismissed for performance issues over the same period and that despite the redundancies and the splitting of the organisation, staffing has remained largely untouched at the new Financial Conduct Authority.

Chris Hadrill, an employment solicitor at Redmans, commented: “Employers have a duty to pay employees statutory redundancy pay once they have been employed with their organisation for a period of two years or more or, alternatively, to pay them any contractual redundancy pay that is payable under their contract of employment. It’s not clear whether the staff at the old FSA were paid statutory redundancy pay or contractual redundancy pay.”