Gov pays out £3.4m in compromise agreements in the last five years

Wednesday 24 November 2021

The Government has spent £3.4m on compromise agreements with civil servants over the past five years, new information has shown.

A total of £3,380,560 has been spent on the agreements between 85 civil servants since 2017, an answer to a written question from Deputy Mike Higgins revealed.

A compromise agreement is a legally binding document that settles any claims around the dismissal of an employee - often, it includes a payment to an employee, settling any claim relating to unfair dismissal.

Pictured: A breakdown of compromise agreements over the past five years.

Over the five years, 2018 was the year where both the most claims were given out, as well as the highest amount, sitting at £1.5m.

In the past year alone, £531,433.68 has been given out between 19 civil servants.

All of the compromise agreements made by the Government over the past five years have also come with non-disclosure clauses.

None of the payments were enhanced however.

It comes after September, when in a report for his proposal to halt the search for a new CEO, Deputy Kirsten Morel noted that the last three Chief Executives had all left with compromise agreements that led to three reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), each featuring recommendations that still need to be implemented. 

The most of recent of these was former CEO, Charlie Parker, who received a £500k compromise agreement following his departure at the start of the year, which exceeded the payout for early departure laid out in his original employment contract.

In July of this year too, Vice President of Prospect warned that an “awful lot of money” is being spent on compromise agreements, which can never be reviewed due to the nature of the agreement, suggesting that mistakes done in the disciplinary processes are being repeated and leading to compensation being required.