IT MAY not be in the same league as the outrageous pay-offs for top BBC executives, but the £1m cost of ‘exit packages’ for seven staff at Dorset County Council will sit very uneasily with local council taxpayers.

The figures are revealed today at the same time as we report the approval by cabinet of a further £10.9m worth of cuts by DCC. And there’s more to come.

Anyone with an ounce of business sense knows that slimming down your workforce comes at a cost and the fact that people in senior positions are leaving the authority and the management structure is being streamlined is good news in the long run.

It can only be right that bureaucracy takes its share of the pain when it comes to the cuts and, as in the private sector, those left behind absorb additional workload. But with the squeeze on public services set to get even worse, taxpayers in Dorset will not want to see many more of these golden goodbyes.