Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council to implement new sickness policy to tackle absence levels

Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council (LCCC) chamber heard the policy is set to be signed off “later in September” following a recent corporate committee attendance report for the period ending June 30, 2024.

The report shows an overall decrease of 19.4% in days lost, including a significant drop in the largest cause of sickness with stress and mental health down by almost 100 days on the previous quarter to 1,134 days lost.

Killultagh Alliance councillor Claire Kemp said: “I welcome the reduction in the number of days lost to sickness.

“We now have one of the lowest levels of absence in Northern Ireland, which is really great news.”

The council has tackled its previous high levels of sickness through a temporary project of a human resources officer meeting with directors, heads of service and line managers to analyse absence with their departments.

The new sickness policy will dramatically reduce the intervention time on long term absence beginning at 30 days.

It is a marked change from the previous 2017 policy with such intervention meetings taking place from 90 days followed by 190 and 270 days.

Lisburn South DUP councillor Andrew Ewing added: “We are now going in the right direction in terms of days lost to sickness, but there the numbers are still high.

“I accept that it would be virtually impossible to get rid of sickness altogether.

“But this is a significant reduction from where we were.”