Kingston Council has apologised to a small maintenance company after mistakenly claiming it paid it more than £4m over five years.

Last month the Surrey Comet reported how the council was investigating its own financial records after a response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed it had allegedly paid Tolworth-based Teasdale Group £4.1m between 2008 and 2013.

The data submitted by the council claimed in 2008-09 alone Teasdale was paid £2.4m for jobs, such as out of hours emergency works and installing road panels.

At the time Teasdale director Andy Potter was bemused by the FoI, saying the information was “a complete curveball”.

Mr Potter then checked his company’s own accounts – and pointed at several jobs carried out for the council had been erroneously duplicated in the FoI.

That included 21 invoices for £6,078, for a job carried out on April 14, 2008 – a total of more than £127,000.

Mr Potter said Teasdale’s accounts feature a single payment of £6,078 for that day. Kingston Council has now admitted to mistakenly duplicating data – and has apologised to Teasdale.

A Kingston Council spokesman said: “An error in the original FoI response resulted in some information being duplicated.

“A review of the data and payments indicates no duplicate transactions. No evidence was found of Teasdale being paid incorrectly.

“We have apologised for the error to Teasdale and to the sender of the FoI request and have tightened procedures.”