Sickness absence costs SIC £3million

COUNCILLORS in Shetland have again raised concerns over the growing number of working days lost due to sickness absence of its staff.

A meeting of the Audit and Standards Committee on Thursday heard that the council was losing £3 million annually through long periods of absence by its employees.

It emerged that, from a list of 62 statutory performance indicators, Shetland Islands Council had performed worse in 30 of them during the last financial year.

Sickness absence among teachers has risen to 6.7 days in 2011/12 (up from 6.2 days in 2010/11), while the figure for other local government employees stands at 13 days lost last financial year (up from 12.2 days in 2010/11).

Performance improvement adviser Jim MacLeod told the meeting that council employees needed a doctor’s certificate only after seven days’ absence from work.

Councillor Theo Smith said he found this “disturbing” and questioned whether this “may be why the figure was so high”.

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He was told that the council was following statutory rules and if the authority wanted to check up any earlier on staff on sick leave, they had to pay for it themselves.

Meanwhile, councillor Amanda Westlake received assurances that detailed explanations would be coming forward as to why whole services such as adult social work and development had not had a single improvement in their performance figures.

And councillor Billy Fox was told that an internal investigation was already under way to get to the bottom of why the net cost of refuse collection per property had shot up from £77.97 in 2010/11 to £106.51 the following year.

The full list of statutory performance indicators can be found here.