Redundancy costs for Dorset council chief executives could amount to almost a million pounds between them.

The six councils are being slimmed down into one new unitary authority next April, which will mean all of the chief officer posts disappearing.

It will not mean six job losses because the joint West Dorset, Weymouth and North Dorset councils already share one chief executive, Matt Prosser, the only one of the Dorset chief executives who has said he is in the running for the new combined council post.

Shadow overview and scrutiny committee members heard the figure for the first time on Wednesday after being told about the process for selecting the first chief executive of the new council with a salary of between £160,000 and £180,000.

That appointment will be announced towards the end of September with interviews taking place in the next couple of weeks.

The figure is thought to include ‘top up’ payments to pensions as well as redundancy costs and will vary from post to post.

News of the figure passed without comment at the committee, meeting in Dorchester, although Cllr Nocturin Lacey-Clarke asked whether councillors sitting on the selection panel could be argued to have a financial interest in their choice of candidate if they wanted to avoid their own council having to pay redundancy. He was told that was not the case.