The Age UK group’s total income has increased by 4.5 per cent in the last financial year, due to a “substantial rise” in the organisation’s legacy income, according to its latest set of accounts.

Age UK’s full accounts for the year ending 31 March 2015, published by Companies House on October 5, show that its total income has increased by £7.5m to £174.6m in the last financial year.

The accompanying annual review, published on the organisation’s website, attributes this increase to the over £5.7m rise in both restricted and unrestricted legacy income during the last financial year, from £22m, to £27.8m.

The organisation spent £49.9m on staff salaries, social security and pension costs as a group in the last financial year, similar to the previous year.

Overall, the group’s total full time equivalent staff fell by 88, from 1,934 in 2014, to 1,846 in 2015. This saw the Age UK group spend just over £1.7m on redundancies (down from £1.8m the previous year) and the charity itself spend £778,128 on redundancies, again down from £976,955 the year before.

The average number of employees working on a full time basis fell across all three of the group projects: with 18 staff leaving the retail arm, 44 from its “other trading” arm and 26 people going from the charity.

As a group total, there was 47 staff earning £60,000 or more in the last financial year, two more than in the previous year. The highest earning employee at the group, who is not named, earned £180,001 - £190,000, but didn’t work exclusively for the charity.

No one working exclusively for the Age UK charity earned more than £100,000.