COUNCIL chiefs have been urged to reveal the full cost to the public purse of early retirements. Tory leader Cllr Norman Critchley is calling for a report on how much the council has paid out for voluntary early retirements and ill health retirements over the last five years. The BEN revealed last week that the council had paid out £2.75 million in the last six years of a £3 million "redeployment" fund.

This went in part towards maintaining the salaries of staff whose jobs had been made redundant and they had to take lower grade posts.

It also included some first year payments for early retirements.

But Cllr Critchley revealed at last night's Bolton Council meeting that even councillors could not find out the full cost to the town hall coffers.

He said: "I do think that we should be given this information.

"There have been reports that this is quite a serious problem in other areas of the country and we need to make sure it does not become a serious problem here."

But Cllr Bob Howarth, Bolton Council leader, said that it was a "quite a task" for finance chiefs to bring together all the figures over the last five years.

The finance department is currently busy sending out council tax bills and there were not enough staff available until a quieter time.

But he said that he was concerned about the number of ill-health retirements and the council was looking at how it could help employees overcome health problems.

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