Staff's 244,000 days off sick - in a year

And the Council is taking intense action to cut the number of its employees taking sick days off after last year's shocking figures.

The authority reckons each of its 20,000 employees took an average of 12.2 sick days in 2003 - that works out at 244,000 days.

Earlier this year a survey of 500 firms, carried out by the Confederation of British Industry, found the average private industry worker took 7.2 days off sick per year - one working week less than the Bradford Council figure.

The Council says it is trying to reduce the figure by retraining many of its managers to cope better with attendance problems, and by making sure they keep full records of any absences.

It claims the measures are working - between January and July this year employees had each taken only around three days off sick each.

A human resources spokesman said: "The Council introduced new attendance management procedures for all staff in April, along with a series of highly successful managers' training courses.

"The new procedure places the emphasis upon managers being pro-active on attendance, for example having interviews with people returning to work after sickness and keeping computer records of staff sickness to identify any trends.

"The Council also operates its own in-house employee health and well-being service which works with managers and individual staff to find ways of enabling staff to return to work after any medium or long-term sickness."

But Liz Devlin, spokesman for the union Unison, said it never agreed to the process. "We have not accepted the procedures or agreed it with them because we felt it was punitive rather than helpful which could potentially harass people who are sick."

Councillor Kris Hopkins, the Council executive's portfolio holder for corporate matters, said pride played a part in staff attendance. "If you work for a failing council, motivating yourself is difficult. But we have made an immense transition over the last few years and are now rated as a 'good' council."

He added: "If we don't encourage staff to continually challenge the way they work we never get better."

Nationally, the private sector believes sick leave cost it £1.75 billion and a loss of 25 million working days last year.

Sandy Needham, chief executive of Bradford Chamber of Commerce, said many private companies used reward schemes as a way of cutting absenteeism.

She described it as a 'carrot and stick' approach. "Some set targets with performance-related bonuses for keeping the levels of absenteeism low. The stick approach might be to interview people when they have been off sick to see if there is a serious problem that needs more attention."

She said the Chamber endorsed this 'hands on' approach and the need for employers to keep an eye on their sick rates.

She said: "It is good practice and it is not just about the cost, the majority of companies are small and medium-sized and if people are off for a significant amount of time it is very difficult to run them."