SICK staff and accidents cost the council more than £9m last year, a report has revealed.
There were 126,000 working days lost to sickness absence, 23,168 were due to the mental well-being problems of 605 employees.
A further 19,642 were related to musculoskeletal conditions such as bad backs, which were suffered by 1,144 workers.
The price of these two issues alone came to almost £3m.
Almost 375 accidents, 88 of them considered serious, were reported by council employees between April 2006 and April 2007.
They resulted in 1,789 days off, at a cost of £514,000.
In 2004/5 the average number of days absence at the council was 13.2 per employee, it is now 10.6. In the private sector the rates are said to be around 4 for a small firm and seven for a large business. Head of human resources Julia Bell said: “The council currently has robust sickness absence regimes. However, in order to further reduce sickness absence, absence management is a key priority for 2007/2008.
Full story in this week's Chronicle
