North Lanarkshire Council have spent £4.26 million on voluntary redundancy payments over the last two years.

The figures were released under Freedom of Information requests made by the Press Association.

Glasgow City Council spent £32.7m on voluntary early retirement between January 2009 and August 2011. The highest single payment was £120,362. The Council said that allowing staff to leave through redundancy or early retirement meant that they made huge savings on its wage bill. It is believed that their early retirement voluntary severance scheme will cut £44m from their annual wage bill.