Council sick days double

Sickness levels for West Midand council workers are almost double those in private companies, new figures released today reveal.

The average council worker in Wolverhampton has missed more than two weeks off work because of sickness in the last year.

In the 2008/09 municipal year, the average Wolverhampton City Council worker missed 11.6 days off work compared to an average of seven in the private sector.

That compares to national average of sickness within private companies of just 6.4 days – a drop on the previous figure of 7.2 days.

Today Wolverhampton Council revealed it was going to get tough with sickness, with Tory Councillor Joan Stevenson, the cabinet member responsible for staffing, saying the leadership was "not prepared to accept it".

She said: "We have tried to be understanding, but this has gone on for far too long and it costs the authority a lot of money – the sickness rates are a lot higher than in the private sector and it has not improved."

The latest figures for Wolverhampton, which excludes teaching staff, is the same as the figure for the 2007/08 municipal year.

Recent figures from Walsall Council showed a sickness rates last year of 12.9 days, an increase on the average of 11.2 days recorded in 2007/08, while in Cannock the average was 13 days compared to 10.6 in 2007/08. The region's stand-out case was South Staffordshire, where workers took an average of just 6.9 days off last year.