Norfolk County Council spent more than £1m making staff redundant as part of a major shake-up at County Hall - with almost £800,000 of that for the severance of six workers.
A strategic review of the Conservative-controlled authority, carried out after consultants were paid £1.9m, led to 36 workers losing their jobs and 71 others being redeployed in other posts.
Papers going before councillors at a meeting on Monday revealed six departing staff each received severance packages worth more than £100,000.
The total severance packages, including redundancy payments and pension strain costs - what the council has to pay after agreeing to bring a member's pension into payment early - was just shy of £800,000.
The council would not reveal which roles had been made redundant.
While not mentioned in the employment committee papers, the council confirmed the six were among 36 staff made redundant, with a total of £1.05m paid out.
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Kay Mason Billig, Norfolk County Council leader, said: "We have saved millions through our strategic review and continue to do so through ongoing work to transform our services, making them more effective and efficient.
"It is important that, where we can, we retain people’s skills in the organisation and keep redundancy costs to a minimum.
"We have done this throughout the strategic review using redeployment and deleting vacant posts. These changes ultimately represent an ongoing saving to the council."
The council recently agreed to increase council tax by 4.99pc and to make £42m of cuts and savings.
Brian Watkins, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said: "We do need a better, more efficient way of working and that may necessitate structural change in the not-too-distant future, but transformation along the lines that the Tories are proposing won't be enough in itself."
Steve Morphew, leader of the Labour group, said: "This gives the impression that the council was carrying notable numbers of senior staff, which means we have been spending money we did not need to.
"Then, the council spent a considerable amount of money making them redundant at the same time as it paid consultants a lot of money to replace the capacity which was just taken out. That feels like a broken model to me."
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