Concern over council staff taking 12 days a year off sick

Richard Evans, Local Democracy Reporter

A councillor said she was shocked by what she described as the “high levels” of staff sickness after figures showed employees are taking an average of 12 days’ sick leave a year.

The comments came during a Conwy County Council scrutiny meeting, where members were discussing a self-assessment report on the authority’s performance between April 2025 and March 2026.

Figures presented at the meeting showed staff sickness absence at 11.78 days lost per full-time employee.

These figures were marked orange in the report as “satisfactory” as a “key measure of workforce capacity, resilience, and management effectiveness”. Staff turnover was also marked at 10.74%.

Penmaenmawr councillor Ann McCaffrey said she was “shocked” by the “high level” of absence. She asked for more detail about the “hidden costs” of staff absence as well as turnover but was told by Head of Finance Amanda Hughes the figures would be too difficult to collate.

Ms Hughes gave the example of agency staff being hired to cover sick recycling workers but said office staff sickness would instead see a drop in productivity.

Cllr McCaffrey responded: “I must admit I was a bit shocked that there’s no concern about the levels, and in fact that we think it is going down in terms of absenteeism.

“I mean, 12 days per full-time employee is a significant amount of lost time, and obviously there will always be sickness absence. That’s a given, but I suppose with a private sector background, it is really shocking to see the high level of absence and turnover and actually that we don’t have a concern about it here in this report in terms of the finance and resources, so I just want to make that point.”

Cllr McCaffrey then referred to the report which said the council’s “financial position continues to be serious” with “increased demand pressures, inflationary impacts, and public expectations all contributing to a difficult operating environment”.

She added: “I think those figures are really worrying in the context of our financial crisis, and we need to look at how we maintain productivity and get value for money for every penny we spend.”

‘Difficult’

Conwy County Council’s Chief Executive Rhun ap Gareth said: “It is always difficult to compare public and private sector because of the various differences between sectors.

“What we can do is compare with each other within the public sector and what good looks like, and that is always a good place to start. If somebody’s doing it better, why? So we’re looking at a complex picture.”

The chief executive then said officers would see what could be done about increasing the amount of information around the hidden costs of staff absence. The committee unanimously backed the report, with recommendations now being made to cabinet.