DWP staff averaged 12.6 sick days a year

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff averaged 12.6 sick days in 2003, equivalent to 5% being off daily, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

Excluding workers who took no sick days the average was 18.6 days - compared with 7.8 days in the private sector.

A DWP spokesman said most staff had good records, but more must be done.

Around 110,000 of the DWP's 142,000 workers had at least one day off, the report by the government's spending watchdog said.

Some 362 staff were off for the whole financial year to March 2004.

'Missed targets'

The absences amounted to a total of 1.72 million working days lost, at a cost of �100m.

The DWP missed its target of reducing sickness levels to an average of 10 days in 2004.

It was also unlikely to achieve its target of eight days by 2006, the NAO said.

The NAO found that absences among DWP managers were a quarter that of more junior employees, while women averaged 2.2 more sick days than men.

Staff aged over 56 were also more likely to be off.

The NAO praised the department's policies on sickness absence, which include compulsory return-to-work interviews, a taskforce for long term cases and better access to occupational health services.

But it said the policies could have been launched more effectively, adding that many basic procedures such as the issuing of warnings were implemented inconsistently or not at all.