200 COUNCIL STAFF OFF SICK

CRUMBRIA: 27.03.2026

MORE than 200 staff at Crumberland Council were off sick on ONE DAY last month.

On February 1, a total of 223 employees were off work sick, which a Council report said was 5% of the workforce.

Of that total, 137 were on long-term sick, meaning they had already been off for more than 28 days.

But don’t worry, a new “dashboard” to solve it all arrives next Wednesday!

The Labour-daft Council has handed a contract worth up to £5.7m to an external company to reduce absences and get staff back to work.

That’s a lot of Lemsips!

The new contract comes as the Council loses about THREE working weeks a year to sickness for every full-time post it has.

Long-term sickness accounts for 71% of all working days lost. So this is not just the odd sniffle and a duvet day, it’s serious.

Stress is the cause of 24% of all long-term sickness absence. But the single biggest cause is “non-work-related stress”.

Mental health issues, excluding stress, account for another 14% of absences, according to Council data.

Musculoskeletal problems such as back, neck and hip pain are other reasons staff are off.

(Years of carrying Local Government on your spine or mind will do that to you.)

Adult Social Care has the worst long-term sickness rate, with 5% of staff off long-term.

The physical job, and loads of rules and regs around safe staffing levels, is piling pressure onto the Council to hire agency staff, pay out overtime or hand over backfill costs, which is where someone’s paid for covering for someone off.

The Council faces a nightmare scenario of human musical chairs, all funded by Taxpayers, naturally.

The backdrop to all this is that the Council is also looking at making £9.6m of “restructuring savings” while acting surprised that stress and long-term absences are high.

The figures were set out in a report to a council meeting earlier this month.

There was no word on presenteeism or the hardworking souls who have exemplary attendance records.

Like we said, the contract to make things better is worth a whopping £5.7m and could go on for SEVEN years.

Because when staff are stressed out and off sick, the public sector cure will always be to chuck more money at it!

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The contract notice.

**Click image to visit the tender notice**

DE JAVU TIME: What we wrote last year: COUNCIL SICK – NO CURE IN SIGHT

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The News & Shrug, Carlisle, attempted to report this meeting with, ahem, one or two key details left out. Click the dying bird to visit.

OR READ: Council launches new health service to help sick employees.

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Dear Dr Chronic,

I have some concerns about colleagues in my workspace. Lots of people are complaining of feeling sick. (To death of working here). A male colleague who sits next to me has constant “ball ache”. A woman in accounts keeps moaning about everything getting “right on her tits”. At the start of every week, I myself suffer from acute pain in the arse. Over the week it spreads to my head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Sometimes it even affects my eyes and ears and mouth and nose. I’ve tried discussing this with my boss but he has an allergy to the office, and now ~~shirks~~ works from home. For some reason, I can’t stop singing I Don’t Like Mondays.

Tell me why?

Yours, Council Worker

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Dear Council Worker,

If you work for Crumberland I’m not surprised you’re feeling a bit peaky. The only way to avoid your symptoms is to become a director then you can be the one micro-managing? You could also stand for election to the Labour Party, but that puts you at risk of bouts of extreme megalomania that you were put on earth to right society’s wrongs using other people’s money. The symptoms you describe are due to prolonged exposure to perennial reorganisation. It might help if you get plenty of fresh air and end all contact with anyone using the phrase “direction of travel” or “challenging journey”. Your situation does sound quite urgent so please book a follow-up appointment with me. I’m an NHS doctor, so I should be free to see you again in about…seven years.

Toodle pip!

Dr Chronic

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