Buckinghamshire Council staff are taking thousands of sick days for mental health, a new report has revealed.

Mental health was the most common reason for long terms absences – 28 days or more – in the year to September 30, accounting for 8,759 days lost.

The second highest reason for long term sickness absence was muscular skeletal issues, with 1,403 days lost, according to an update on the council’s workforce and sickness absence management.

The report was presented to a recent meeting of the council’s finance and resources select committee.

Cllr Michael Bracken told the meeting: “It just bothers me that we are still in a position where our sickness levels are as high as they are.

“I accept that the unitary council benchmarks may be even worse than us, but I don’t take great comfort from that. I would expect our council to operate at the better end.”

Mental health-related absences were the highest reason for long term absences across all council departments, according to the report.

Overall data shows there were 8,682 days lost in October 2023, before a peak for the year of 9,648 in June 2024 and then a gradual decline to 8,759 in September 2024.

The council, which has 4,441 employees, has introduced several strategies for reducing absences, including training managers to ‘give them the confidence to take early interventions with attendance issues’ and holding ‘health and attendance surgeries’ to further support managers.

John Chilver, the council’s cabinet member for accessible housing and resources said: “As an organisation the health and wellbeing of our staff is a top priority and we work extremely hard to ensure that as an organisation we lose as few days as possible to staff sickness.

“We know that a healthy and happy workforce goes hand in hand with high productivity and performance levels and we are proud to be among the best performing county and unitary councils for managing staff absence as published data from the Local Government Association demonstrates.

“We are pleased that our investment in the wellbeing of our staff is evident through our sickness absences figures which are bucking the national trend, with falling levels when in the majority of organisations, sickness levels are rising.

“Supporting the mental health of our staff is a really big priority for us; and whilst mental health remains the top reason for staff sickness absence, we are still seeing falls particularly in some service areas where the demands of the type of work our colleagues do can impact on their stress levels. We work hard to provide the right kind of help and support for colleagues across the organisation.

“We continue to work hard at keeping our sickness levels as low as possible but feel we do have a good record on this front at Buckinghamshire Council.”