Payroll errors have led to Kent County Council staff being overpaid by more than £1.5m in four years, it has emerged.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that between 2008 and 2012, a total of 1,815 people received more money than they were entitled to.

During the four-year period, current staff were wrongly overpaid by £1,008,811 and former staff were mistakenly paid £555,630.

To date, some £748,661 has been repaid by staff and close to £300,000 by former employees.

The data follows the revelation of a number of cases involving overpayments and errors, the most notable of which involved the council leader seeing his allowances being paid to a maintenance fitter by the same name - Paul Carter. He had mistakenly received £21,000.

Cllr Roger Gough (Con), KCC's cabinet member for business strategy, said: "Clearly these errors should not have happened and we apologise to those individuals for any distress caused.

"While overpayments owed to the council account for significantly less than one percent of payments, or one in 1,000 people, we understand why this would be of concern to the taxpayers of Kent."

Most mistakes were corrected within days, he added: "Major issues are few and far between and we work hard to put them right by making sure we recover overpayments to staff as soon as possible. Our reclaim rate has been improving strongly in the last few years."

Opposition parties have called for an inquiry and the issue is likely to be examined by KCC's cross party policy scrutiny committee.