Ministry of Defence civil servant awarded £86,000 bonus Bonuses remain a controversial area of pay within the MoD and are linked to a complicated series of targets which can range from cost savings to hitting diversity targets. Ministers have spoken of the need to rein in the bonus culture in Whitehall and make the payments genuine rewards for exceptional performances, rather than routine parts of civil servants" remuneration. However, The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the level of bonuses in the MoD are not expected to be reduced given that staff have faced a two year pay freeze. In the past year 56 senior officials - those in the highest civil service grades - shared £505,000, averaging £9,000 each. Junior staff were handed a total of £37.9 million, typically taking home £697 - meaning 54,375 of its employees received bonuses, a level in contrast to ministers" intention that bonuses are not given routinely. The highest level of bonuses were awarded to the Department of Work and Pensions, whose employees scooped £51 million. The Department of Transport paid out £9.2million, the Foreign Office £6.4 million and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs £2.3 million. The Department for Education spent £1.9 million on bonuses, the Department for Health £1.7 million, the Cabinet Office £1.3million and the Department for Innovation and Skills £1.1million. But it will be the two highest bonuses which raise most questions about the culture within the ministry. The £85,831 payment - the same as the salary of a colonel in the Army - went to an unnamed senior civil servant who is understood to be a member of the Defence Board. It oversees every aspect of the work of the MoD and includes three civil servants - Ursula Brennan, the permanent secretary, Bernard Gray, the chief of defence materiel and Jon Thompson, the director-general of finance. The second largest bonus was a payment of £64,459 to another unnamed senior civil servant. The scale of the bonuses raised concern even inside the MoD. One source said: "Time and again we have been told that we all have to tighten our belts and share some of the financial pain so it sticks in the throat when you discover that someone already earning well over £100,000 gets an £85,000 bonus." The payments were made at the same time as criticisms mounted over the long-running performance of the MoD. Last week it announced that it had finally closed the £38 billion "black hole" in its budget by balancing its books - but in November received stinging criticism over its procurement policies from the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament. Margaret Hodge, its chairman, said the MoD had been guilty of "continuous poor planning and performance with the result that the Ministry of Defence's largest military equipment projects are delivering less, at a greater cost than planned, and taking longer to be completed." The report found warned that Britain's 15 biggest defence projects are expected to cost £6bn more than first estimated and will be delayed by a combined total of 26 years. And it highlighted the repeatedly delayed Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, upon which £3.4bn was spent before it was scrapped, to save an estimated £1.9bn in running costs over the next 10 years. The MoD said it was impossible to rein in bonuses this year because of a three-year pay and bonuses deal implemented by the previous Labour government. But the payments are in stark contrast to the settlement for soldiers, sailors and RAF personnel, who have had pay rises capped at 1 per cent. The deep cuts will see the Army made much smaller with a withdrawal from Germany, tank and artillery units slashed, the Ghurkas reduced in size and soldiers at every level made redundant and the RAF losing bases and planes. The Navy has already lost its Harrier jump jets and now operates the smallest fleet in its history. The Coalition is currently attempting to slash the levels of bonuses paid and the number of civil servants who receive them. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, have written to all government departments asking them to review their schemes. In future, bonuses should only be paid for "genuine excellence" and not "run-of-the-mill performance after it emerged that up to a quarter of officials automatically qualified for rewards. Since Britain went to war with Iraq in March 2003, MoD bureaucrats have shared around £370million in bonuses. This is a third higher than the £260million cost of the war in Libya. It has also emerged that senior servants are entitled to claim for damaged clothing, handbags and shoes at the expense of the taxpayer even if the government department was not negligent. A MOD spokesman said: "Difficult decisions have had to be taken to deal with the black hole the Government inherited; this has included reductions to military and civilian personnel. Under a three year agreement made by the last Government performance awards were part of the total wage bill paid out naturally, it is just that a proportion of pay was spent on a performance basis. More than half of all MOD civil servants earn less than £20,000 a year, and in 2010-11 the average award, which is taxable, was £677. The new Government has since implemented a pay freeze. The bonus figure comes after the disclosure that senior civil servants across Whitehall have perks which include being able to claim towards to cost of clothes and shoes which have been damaged or even simply become worn.