MISTAKES made by council employees have cost taxpayers in Selby up to £30,000.

An investigation into how Selby District Council distributes its benefits was carried out as a matter of procedure by Mazars, and the results were shared at an audit meeting.

The investigation found the council had made "errors in calculating claimants average weekly income", used incorrect start dates for benefit payments, and misclassified overpayments into wrong categories of benefits.

The review said: "In some of these cases, claimants were underpaid or overpaid benefit, illustrating the importance of getting these calculations right first time.

"If all the errors identified were extrapolated to the whole population of cases, the council would have been entitled to an additional £29,942 of subsidy. This illustrates that getting things right first time can also be of benefit to the council. These errors meant that, based on extrapolations, the council lost out on subsidy that would otherwise have been available to it."

Labour leader Councillor Steve Shaw-Wright said this was not the first time basic errors had been made at the council, and claimed they were likely due to budget cuts.

He said: "I am sure this is no fault of council staff who work incredibly hard.

"However, with staffing levels cut to the bone mistakes do happen, but there are several layers of management who should have picked up these errors."

A spokesman for the council said: "This is part of a normal annual review process that all councils that deliver benefits services undertake. To put this into context: the level of the issue is not deemed to be out of the ordinary by central government.

"Of course, when the issue was highlighted to us we undertook a number of key actions to check the work that had been done and review processes. These were in line with the auditors' recommendations and they have since confirmed that they are satisfied with the outcome."

Changes made to the council's procedures include checking all backdated claims, increasing the sample number of claims checked for accuracy from five per cent to 10 per cent, and refresher training for many staff on overpayment and the assessment of wages.