A Scottish council has added a new checking procedure to its finance system after an error led to a member of the public being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The council was supposed to pay the person in question £59.95 a month. However, a typing error meant they received £59,395 five times in July and August before the error was discovered.

The council has recovered all but £12,000 of the cash and it has set up a repayment plan for the rest of the money.

Service manager Jacqueline Armitage commented: ‘Unfortunately a keying error resulted in the wrong payment being issued and, as it was set up as an automatically recurring payment, multiple payments were made.

‘The incorrect recurring payment should have been picked up as part of our normal checks, so we’ve now put an additional reporting mechanism in place to create a dual-checking system.’