THE Met Office has paid staff around £1.4m in bonuses at a time when most other public sector organisations are facing severe cuts.

The forecaster made the payments to staff — averaging £760 each — for hitting performance-related targets in the financial year 2009-10.

The government trading fund, part of the Ministry of Defence, said it was making healthy profits and returned millions of pounds to the MoD.

The Met Office employs nearly 1,700 people worldwide and has its headquarters near Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter.

Met Office spokesman Dave Britton confirmed bonuses had been paid.

"The Met Office is pleased to confirm we have exceeded all of our key performance targets in 2009-10, including all weather forecasting targets and business profitability," he said.

"We also returned an operating profit of £6.6m and paid £4.5m dividend back to MoD."

Mr Britton also said public opinion was behind the Met Office, which moved to the city from Bracknell in 2004, and surveys showed that its forecasts were largely believed.

"In addition to these results recent public research shows 84 per cent of the public trust the advice given by the Met Office and, importantly, 90 per cent think our severe weather warnings are useful."

Earlier this year the Met Office came under fire after it emerged that staff were awarded more than £12m in bonuses in the last five years.

Junior defence minister Kevan Jones said staff at the weather forecasting service in Exeter got a total of £12,329,000 between 2004 and 2009.

But he said employees were aware their performance-related pay needed to be "re-earned each year".

Mr Jones said: "Met Office staff are eligible to receive performance-related pay based on achievements against specific targets agreed by the Met Office Board.

"These are linked to the success of the Met Office at either individual, team or organisational level."

The Echo revealed last August that £1.1m had been given to staff, £650 each, in payouts linked, in part, to the accuracy of weather predictions in the 2008-09 financial year.

Devon tourist bodies sharply criticised the public-sector company when last July was deluged with rain, despite its predictions of a "barbecue summer".

In 2008 the Met Office said it would be an average summer with a low risk of heavy rainfall. It later admitted it was "one of the wettest on record across the UK".

All the staff were paid this bonus, whether they work in predicting the weather or any other department.

At the time Malcolm Bell, the then chief executive of South West Tourism, said he worried tourists attracted to Devon this year might not return because they would feel weather forecasts were unreliable.