THE bill for making 30 Wyre Forest District Council staff redundant has been confirmed as £1.85 million.

A report to the district council’s audit committee revealed the figure at a meeting on Monday.

In the report, district auditor, Liz Cave, stated that during the year they had been in discussion with officers about “the accounting treatment of £1.85 million of redundancy costs”.

Conservative, John Campion, Leader of the council, said the figure was “old news” and had generated “a storm in a tea cup”.

He explained: “This was bought and paid for back at the beginning of the financial year. It is not additional money but money spent.”

He said the report was purely “a paper exercise”, to determine whether the money came from the revenue budget or capital reserves.

He added that frontline services would “absolutely not” be affected by the cuts.

The redundancies were announced as part of a draft of measures aimed at balancing the books as a result of the economic downturn.

Mr Campion had announced earlier in the year that a total of 30 voluntary and compulsory redundancies would be made “right across the council”.

He said collapsing interest rates were the main cause of the financial problems, rather than the uncertainty over £9 million invested in Icelandic banks, which he has described as “less significant”.

More than £1 million of the £5 million invested in Icelandic bank, Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander, has now been returned to the council.

Mr Campion said he was hopeful that the entire amount invested would be recouped.