Town hall sick days cost taxpayers £3m per day

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has revealed that millions of pounds are being lost every day to local authority absenteeism. Sickness absence is costing councils around £667 million every year, meaning taxpayers are losing around £3 million per working day.

Freedom of information requests reveal town hall staff are taking twice as much sick leave as their private sector counterparts, and at least 30 per cent more than the average across the rest of the public sector. With an average of 10 days off sick each year between 2022-23 and 2024-25, council employees were taking more sick days than people working in construction, manufacturing and even health and social care jobs.

Figures suggest that mental health now accounts for over one quarter of all local authority sickness absence. Council staff are invoking mental health as a reason for sickness absence at more than three times the national level, at a cost of £176 million in a single year. Costs have risen sharply since 2022-23, when it stood at around £128 million, and look set to rise further.

With a total of 9 million working days lost across a single year, town halls are missing out on the equivalent to 41,302 full time roles. This is the same size as the entire workforce of JD Wetherspoons. The report finds that poor management is often to blame, with Tower Hamlets suffering the worst sickness rates in London of 12.9 days lost per FTE employee, while nearby Bexley loses less than half of this at 5.3 days.

One council in Northern Ireland, Fermanagh and Omagh, reported the highest average of 18.6 days lost, while Glasgow Council clocked up an astonishing 1.32 million days lost in total over three years, the highest in the country. Of these, 952,489 were due to ‘long term sickness’.

Fenland District Council in Cambridgeshire saw the highest days lost due to mental health, making up more than half of their reported reasons for calling in sick. Fenland boasts of its “happy and motivated workforce”, offering benefits including a “generous” holiday allowance, car user allowance, discounted access to leisure facilities, eyesight tests, and the opportunity “to enjoy hybrid working.” Fenland’s “mental health first aiders” are expected to “deliver campaigns and fundraising activities to embed mental health awareness across the Council.”

In contrast, Ashfield, Canterbury, Liverpool and Thurrock recorded the lowest average number of sick days in their regions. Each lost less than 3 days, with Canterbury reporting just 0.1 days per full time equivalent.

The TPA report warns that staffing issues are leading to a growing reliance on agency staff, costing £1.9 billion in a single year. Over a three year period, councils spent £5.5 billion on around 190,631 agency staff. Hackney Council admitted an average of 42 per cent of its workforce were from agency between 2022-23 and 2024-25. London councils tended to rely far more on agency staff than others.

To combat the rising cost of agency staff, and the negative impacts on services to taxpayers, the TaxPayers’ Alliance and report author David Taylor are calling for firm limits on agency use, cutting out the use of recruitment firms and tightening sickness absence management, specifically by increasing the transparency of sickness data made available to the public.
Given the growing focus on devolution, ministers should make improving sick day rates a precondition for any local authority requests for additional funding.