DORSET Council has made more than £100,000 in duplicate payments over the past couple of years – although it has recovered most of the money.

The duplicate payments were highlighted by an internal audit report – with the issue raised at a Monday committee meeting by Portland councillor, Sue Cocking, who asked how much of the money had been recovered.

Audit and Governance Committee members were told that most of the duplicate payments were made to businesses the council has long-term relationships with and the overpayments were corrected without any difficulties, although a small sum, of around £460, remained outstanding.

Finance director Jim McManus said that the council now employs a software product which should enable potential duplicates to be identified before payments are made – rather than have to recover the money afterwards.

“A lot of work has gone into designing duplicate payments out of the system rather than inspecting for them afterwards,” he said.

Corporate development director Aidan Dunn said that the council had greatly reduced the amount of duplicate payments, which he said did have an extra cost in officer time. He said that compared to the amount of money which the authority handles each year the amounts involved were a tiny proportion of the throughput.

He said for the last quarter he had figures for started out with £189,000 in duplicate payments, but ended with just under £460 outstanding.

Cllr Cocking said she was pleased to hear the council’s officers were being diligent in rectifying the duplicate payments: “It’s council taxpayers money, at the end of the day, and I don’t think they’d be very happy if people were being paid twice,” she said.