Bradford's stressed-out street cleaners are costing council tax payers hundreds of thousands of pounds in days off sick in their never-ending battle against grime.

The staff were off an average of 13.4 days each in the last financial year, leaving an estimated £112,000 of work to be done by other workers who sometimes got overtime.

Grievances submitted by the workers and disciplinary measures are also costing about £90,000 a year in management time.

Today, union officials squarely blamed the figures on stress, and said the workers were always in the firing line by their bosses and because of public expectations.

The shock figures are revealed in a review of the service to be considered by the environment scrutiny committee to judge whether council tax payers are getting best value for money.

The report to be submitted by team leader Jill Campbell includes staff who carry out street cleaning, emptying litter bins, removing fly tipping and cleaning gullies. The service has 150 workers who operate from the Stocksbridge depot, Keighley, and Harris Street, Bradford.

Workers who took part in a survey during the review complained that they were expected to make decisions on their own and there was inequality in relation to sex, race and manual status. They said it affected opportunity, training and morale.

The review shows sickness for the last financial year down on the 1998/99 figures, however, when absences were at an all-time high and cost the council a staggering £140,000.

Scrutiny committee chairman Councillor Ghazanfer Khaliq said: "The review is a matter of concern to me and I will want more information. I want to see the sickness figures down."

But bosses say they are making a "determined effort" to counter the problem and sickness levels have dropped, partly because of a monitoring system which enables frequent absentees to get advice and even counselling when they return to work in a bid to get to the root of their problems.

The review team also recommends bosses to concentrate on informal problem-solving to cut the costs of disciplinary measures.

But today unions representing the cleansing workers said many workers suffered from stress.

A GMB spokesman said: "They do a good job but they always seem to come under fire. The service has always been under funded."

Terry Patten, Bradford branch secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, said: "There is a lot of stress - a lot of it caused by job insecurity. There is pressure from City Hall and people wanting new working practices at the flick of a coin.

"I believe the cleansing workers do a good job and Bradford has one of the best services in the country."

A cleansing worker, who did not want to be named but was off suffering from stress last year, said: "I felt tired all the time and I wasn't sleeping at night because I was worrying about things.

"The management was always changing the system and promising the public things which we couldn't do. We were being blamed on all sides."

The figures compare with an average of 10.5 days absence over the whole of the council and 11.6 days for all manual workers. But the figures are slightly below the averages for other metropolitan councils.

The council set up a stress action plan - including counselling at a cost of £85,000 two years ago. It followed a study by experts at Sheffield University which concluded that 40 per cent of the council workers were stressed - the majority of them teachers.

New research by the Health and Safety Executive shows teachers, nurses, managers and professionals are affected worst by work related stress.

The research carried out by a team from Bristol University shows one in five of Britain's workers report being extremely stressed by their jobs.