A former aviation security officer says the privatisation of the service has come at a great cost.

Eleven aviation security officers have taken redundancy after the service was contracted out to a private firm. Others have been redeployed.

Noonans has now taken on the additional role of boundary security from this week.

The former member of the Avsec team, who wished to remain anonymous, said: ’Two weeks before Christmas staff received letters requesting their attendance the following day to discuss savings.

’The airport director stated Treasury were requesting a £250,000 saving and the catalyst for this were high amounts of overtime, an alleged 28% pay increase claim from two years previously - which the staff refuted - and the report compiled by York Aviation that had identified possible savings within Avsec.’

He said the management didn’t accept that they played a part in the overtime costs by not dealing with the issues that caused this in the first place.

And he said the 28% alleged pay increase was actually an equality claim with their counterparts of 5% towards shift enhancement.

He said Avsec officers who cover 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, were paid between £18,500 and £23,000 plus a shift pay at an additional 16% of basic and a weekend premium of £5,550 per year.

But he said this meant they were the second lowest paid government workers within the airport.

Four options were given to staff - voluntary redundancy, find the saving of £250,000, redeployment, or stay employed but on a flat rate of £24,000.

Ten staff chose redundancy and six chose redeployment although one later swapped to redundancy.

Two staff found their own jobs within government, only one was found a job and two staff at the 11th hour stayed in what is understood to be a newly created and unadvertised role.

The Avesec officer said: ’Whilst it is inevitable eventually savings will be made for the government it has come at a great cost and significant impact to many, including the travelling public and other airport departments.’

He claimed the contractor had not been fully staffed on a regular basis for a number of years and having taken on the Avsec role was now ’greatly understaffed’.