The level of staff sickness absence at Southampton City Council is too high, a senior officer has admitted.

The local authority has lost 28,858 days to absence over the past year.

Across a workforce of 3,171 full-time equivalent posts, this equated to 9.1 days per employee compared to a sector average of eight days.

A report to the council’s governance committee said sickness absence currently costs approximately £2.6million a year when looking at days lost due to sickness.

This did not include the cost of agency workers recruited to cover absences.

Members of the governance committee voiced concerns about the figures at a meeting on Monday, February 10.

Conservative councillor Rob Harwood said the situation was “still quite horrendous” despite a lot of effort being made over the years.

Kerry Eldridge, director of people and culture, said she agreed that the absence rate was too high but insisted there was more that could be done on occupational health and supporting colleagues.

“It is early intervention,” Ms Eldridge said. “We know some sickness absence isn’t reported until quite some time after the person has been off.

“We need to work with our managers around reporting of sickness absence early, so that there can be much more proactive support around reaching out to those colleagues and making sure that they get the right support as early as possible.”

Labour councillor Mike Denness said the absence figures were “stubbornly high”.

The committee heard that the council’s current levels of absence were higher than those Ms Eldridge had experienced in her previous roles with the NHS.

Cllr Denness said: “Even with all the pressures the NHS is under and all of the difficulties the NHS is having, who do a fantastic job, we are actually in a worse state than they are as an average.”

Ms Eldridge said: “I think the sickness is too high but I also think there is much more we can do in relation to how we support managers and those colleagues who are experiencing sickness absence.”

The report to the committee said short-term absence accounted for 42 per cent of overall absence, with long-term sickness defined as a continuous period of absence exceeding 20 days.

The biggest causes of long-term sickness by a “significant” proportion were musculoskeletal and psychological-related absences.