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Her estimate was met with shock and a dash of skepticism from seasoned attorneys suing the county, who said it would blow any previous sex abuse payout out of the water.

The payouts were part of a wider financial crisis that left the council with the greatest level of debt of any local authority in England.

In extreme cases, the ombudsman can ask councils to compensate people whose complaints are upheld - and data shared with the BBC shows a marked rise in those payouts.

You can defer tax on this gain if you use the insurance payout to rebuild or buy a replacement property, says Mark Luscombe, a principal analyst with Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Department officials are said to be quietly studying the problem of growing legal payouts, with the hope of figuring out ways to clamp down on behavior that can lead to such lawsuits.