AN ambulance service has re-hired six managers after paying out nearly £1million in redundancy payments.

The six unidentified staff members were each given average payouts of £150,000 when they were axed from the East of England Ambulance Service as part of a cost cutting drive.

They have since been employed again.

A Freedom of Information request revealed that one of them was originally a qualified paramedic being paid £50,000 a year to train staff.

He has now returned to teach student paramedics covering frontline staff shortages, after being hired through an agency on a similar salary.

Four of the former managers are now employed on the bank system for front line staffing- three as paramedics and one as a patient transport service worker.

Their work is casual, meaning regular shifts are not guaranteed.

The final two staff members have been employed for specific purposes through other companies- one delivering job evaluation services and the other as a trainer.

Dia Chakravarty, political director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is absolutely ludicrous that taxpayers pick up the tab for generous redundancy packages only to see those that have been let go rehired soon after.

“It is exactly the sort of bad management and lack of foresight we simply cannot afford in the public sector.”

A spokesman for the ambulance service said: “Vast restructure processes during 2014 and the early part of 2015 were made to invest more money into front line staffing – this included a combination of reducing the spend on agency and interim staff and restructuring of support services and leadership ar rangements.

"The restructure led to a number of voluntary and compulsory redundancies to reinvest about £10million savings in ongoing pay costs into front line services.

“All redundancies and the associated one off costs were overseen and signed off by the Trust Development Authority and calculated as per national NHS Terms and Conditions of Service arrangements.”