FIFE Council made a “hefty” typing error and mistakenly dished out nearly £300,000 to a resident’s account.

The member of the public was due to receive £59.95 a month but the mistake meant £59,395 was lodged into their bank instead.

The payments were made five times during July and August this year before red-faced council officials discovered the error, amounting to almost £297,000.

They've had to ask for the money back but there's still more than £12,000 that has still to be recovered and the recipient has been asked to repay the money in instalments.

A new "dual checking" system will also be created to prevent a similar blunder from happening again.

MSP Willie Rennie, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Although everyone can make a mistake, this is a hefty one.

“The majority of the funds have been recovered but it is concerning that it took so long for the system to pick up this error.

“We need an explanation from the chief executive of the council with details of why this was not identified earlier and what will be done to make sure the system is more robust in future.”

Fife Council confirmed that a new checking procedure has been installed to prevent the mishap from being repeated.

It is believed that the error was discovered during budget monitoring by the council’s financial services department.

Jacqueline Armitage, Fife Council’s service manager, explained: “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.

“We retrieved the majority of the funds and have agreed a repayment plan for the outstanding amount.”