BRADFORD Council staff took, on average, 9.59 days off sick last year.

A report on managing absences of authority staff will be heard by the Council’s corporate overview and scrutiny committee next Wednesday.

It showed sickness days had dropped from 14.29 in 2005/06.

Committee member Councillor Simon Cooke said the “best-performing organisations” took five days’ sickness on average, and added: “I think we are making very slow progress on this. We have still got a lot of work to do.”

Committee chairman Cllr Arshad Hussain said: “With the statistics showing that the rates are heading in the right direction, it’s a good opportunity for us to monitor and scrutinise the detail and see what is being done to further improve that trend.”

The committee is set to recommend that “all departments continue to prioritise sickness absence and maintain all efforts to further improve performance”.