Mental health issues remain the main reason why staff at West Berkshire Council go off sick.
Mental health is the main reason staff at West Berkshire Council go off sick. Latest figures show a fall in long-term sickness overall, but long-term absence still makes up 53.9% of all time lost (3,678.5 days).
Short-term absence is any period under 28 calendar days. The most common cause of long-term absence is mental health conditions. For short-term absences the main reasons are minor illnesses, including coughs, colds and flu, and sickness, nausea and diarrhoea. In total, 29% of all sickness absence—both long and short term—was due to mental health.
The council’s human resources team says it is addressing sickness levels through ongoing policy and training reviews with line managers.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes an annual workplace absence survey. The 2024 report, published in June 2025, says the percentage of working hours lost to sickness or injury fell to 2% in 2024, but is 0.1 percentage point higher than the pre-coronavirus 2019 level.
Across the UK, an estimated 148.9 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in 2024.
The 2025 CIPD Wellbeing at Work report, published in September 2025 and supported by Simply Health, shows average absence levels have risen to 9.4 days. Employee absence rates have increased across the board but remain highest in the public sector at 13.3 days per employee per year, as stated in the CIPD report.
Niki Hinman, Local Democracy Reporter
