Staff at Cherwell District Council were rewarded with a picnic area costing thousands of pounds and an extra day off after the council got an excellence award.

But months later each employee received a letter asking them to take voluntary redundancy, unpaid leave or reduce their hours.

The move has been criticised by a taxpayers’ pressure group, which accused the council of bad financial planning.

It also said the money should have been spent on services for taxpayers.

Last night, Cherwell was unable to give the actual cost of providing the extra day off for its 534 staff, but the Oxford Mail plans to submit a Freedom of Information request to find out.

By using the net cost of wages at the council – £14m – and dividing it by the number of staff, we estimate it would have cost the authority in the region of £53,400.

The £16,000 picnic area, completed last month, was a permanent thank you to staff to celebrate an excellence award from the Audit Commission.

When it was built on overgrown scrubland, builders disturbed a sett of badgers, which moved to a neighbouring garden and damaged the lawn to the tune of £50.

Council spokesman Craig Forsyth said a survey was carried out before the work started, which showed no badgers were living there.

He said the new picnic area was also available for people getting married in the nearby register office to take wedding photographs.

Council leader Barry Wood said: “Creating a picnic area at Bodicote House has improved the facilities for visitors and our staff. We have turned a wasted area into a useful and attractive space.

“People getting married at Old Bodicote House now have a woodland backdrop for wedding photographs and we have an outdoor extension to our restaurant facilities, which are open to the public as well as staff.”

John O’Connell, a policy analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Granting staff more holiday is incredibly costly. It’s no surprise that they are now being forced to look for savings.

“Hard-up people pay council tax for services, not for council workers to take it easy.

“If services now have to be cut, taxpayers are right to blame the council’s management.”

Cherwell said it had to make more than £2.5m in savings ahead of widely-predicted cuts in Government funding from next year.

The authority has said it cannot rule out making compulsory redundancies to achieve its cost-cutting targets.