A COMPUTER glitch led to 23 Wiltshire Council library staff being overpaid by a total £357,000, it has emerged.

The council has admitted the error and the employees have now paid back the thousands of pounds extra they received in their pay packets.

A spokesman said: "We have put in place measures to ensure this type of error does not occur again.”

But Liberal Democrat councillor for Salisbury St Edmund and Milford, Paul Sample, said: “This news comes only weeks after Wiltshire Council was heavily criticised for holes in its budget plans. It is not a great record for the new council.”

The incident, in September, affected only certain library staff who have different payroll sheets to other council employees.

The spokesman said the council had introduced a new software system that had already saved £2million and that, overall, it had been very successful.

In September it processed 41,000 payments totalling £109million.