A SCOTTISH college principal and senior staff who colluded to “feather their own nests” with excessive severance packages are to be brought before the Scottish Parliament.

MSPs want to question individuals from the former Coatbridge College, in Lanarkshire, after seven people shared payouts of nearly £850,000 of public funds and “deliberately withheld” official advice calling the payments into question.

Former principal John Doyle received severance of £304,000 when the institution merged to form New College Lanarkshire in 2014. Six others also shared in the payments. A further £850,000 was shared among 26 other people, bring the total amount paid during the restructure to £1.7 million.

The case, which came at a time when college budgets were being cut and staff laid off, was described by Auditor General Caroline Gardner as one of the most serious failures in governance she had ever encountered at a meeting Holyrood Public Audit Committee yesterday.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) questioned the payments at the time, but it was powerless to stop them, with concerns also raised that their advice had been deliberately withheld from the college remuneration committee.

Because there was nothing illegal in the way the payments were made the principal and officials cannot be prosecuted nor the money recovered.

Paul Martin MSP, convenor of the committee which has launched an investigation, said: “The committee shares the deep concerns the Auditor General has about the handling of severance packages for senior staff at Coatbridge College.

“We are not prepared to view these deeply questionable decisions as historic, we are determined to get answers and to hold those involved to account.”

He added the MSPs will be requesting documentary evidence from a range of organisations and people before they are asked to attend. He added that they faced “serious questions” prompted by the Auditor General’s report. “We are also interested in hearing from anyone who has information directly relevant to this piece of work,” he continued.

Earlier, SNP MSP Nigel Don told the committee the case was a “particularly bad example of misuse of funds, deliberate withholding of information and of feathering one’s own nest”.

Ms Gardner said: “These are very serious failures of governance, amongst the most serious that I have seen in my time in this role.

“A case this egregious is unusual. What appears to have happened is the chair of the board and the principal worked together to achieve a certain outcome, with members of the remuneration committee not receiving the information they needed to make their decision, and not receiving the concerns that had been raised by the SFC.

“It was a deliberate withholding of information, as far as I am able to draw a conclusion from the evidence that is there.”

Ms Gardner said the SFC should monitor future remuneration packages closely. “If that leaves a gap it would be worth exploring whether other remedies, including legal remedies, are needed,” she said.

“I hope they wouldn’t be [the case]. Most public servants don’t behave like this most of the time.”

She also said: “The new arrangements should mean that it couldn’t happen, with the SFC now needing to approve severance packages before they are paid. I don’t know whether it would be possible for that sort of collusion to prevent that control.”