Submitted by Bill Fernie
17th August 2026
There is a figure in Scotland's local government statistics that deserves rather more attention than it has received.
Scottish councils lost 2.65 million working days to sickness absence in 2023/24.
That is not a small number. It represents millions of hours of council-paid time when employees were not at work, at a time when councils are under enormous financial pressure and struggling to maintain services.
And now the TaxPayers' Alliance has produced research showing just how high sickness absence has become in individual councils across Britain. Its latest work has put Glasgow City Council firmly in the spotlight, with 437,833 sickness days recorded in 2024/25 and an average of 14.8 days per full-time employee.
So what about Scotland's other councils — and, more particularly, Highland Council?
The Scottish picture is getting worse and the figures from Audit Scotland provide a useful starting point.
In 2023/24, the average Scottish council employee took 13.9 days of sickness absence. That was a dramatic increase from the 2020/21 figure of 9.6 days an increase of approximately 45 per cent.
Even more telling is that the increase was not concentrated in a handful of authorities. Sickness absence increased in 25 of Scotland's 32 councils.
For teachers, the average was 7.6 days in 2023/24, and sickness absence had increased in 30 of the 32 councils compared with 2020/21. Audit Scotland's wider examination of council workforces found that Scottish councils employed around 262,000 people, with employment costs of approximately £10.3 billion.
Employee costs accounted for around 72 per cent of councils' net revenue expenditure. That puts the sickness issue into perspective.
This isn't simply an HR statistic. It is potentially a taxpayer and service-delivery issue.
What does 2.65 million days actually mean? It is difficult to visualise 2.65 million working days.
If we assume a five-day working week, it is equivalent to roughly 530,000 working weeks.
Or put another way, it represents more than 10,000 years of working weeks.
Of course, people become ill. Council employees, like everyone else, are entitled to sick leave when they are genuinely unwell.
The question isn't whether people should be allowed to take time off when they are sick. The question is whether councils are doing enough to understand, manage and reduce long-term and recurring absence.
That distinction matters and Audit Scotland itself recognises that there are legitimate reasons for rising absence. Councils have ageing workforces, recruitment difficulties, increasing workloads and growing pressures on services.
But those explanations should not mean that the numbers are simply accepted as inevitable.
And then there is Highland
Highland Council initially looks reasonably favourable when compared with the Scottish average.
In 2023/24, Highland reported around 11.4 days lost per employee, compared with the Scottish average of 13.9. That suggested Highland was performing considerably better than many other Scottish councils.
But the situation has subsequently deteriorated.
Highland Council's own workforce reporting puts its average sickness absence at approximately 13.16 days per employee in 2024/25.
That means Highland has moved much closer to the Scottish average in a relatively short period.
And some parts of the council are considerably higher. The Communities and Place service reported 18.75 days' absence per employee in 2024/25, up from 16.7 the previous year. The council says that long-term absence included mental health, musculoskeletal and heart-related conditions.
Health and Social Care recorded 14.96 days per employee, compared with the Highland Council average of 13.16. The council suggested that staff vacancies could be contributing to the problem because shortages put additional pressure on existing employees.
Education presents another interesting picture.
Highland's latest workforce reporting shows an average of 9.96 days for teaching staff but 15.1 days for non-teaching staff.
So there isn't really one Highland sickness problem. There are several.
There is an important issue here which councils themselves recognise. Suppose a council department is already short of staff. The remaining employees have to cover the vacancies. That increases workloads and pressure. Some employees then become ill or suffer stress-related problems. That creates more absence. The remaining workforce has to work even harder. And the cycle continues.
Highland Council has specifically identified vacancy rates as a potential contributor to rising absence in Health and Social Care.
This is one reason why simply criticising employees for taking sick leave would be wrong but there is another side to the argument. If the problem becomes persistent, management has to intervene.
Long-term sickness is particularly important and the Scottish figures become even more interesting when we look at councils where detailed information is available.
Take Moray Council. Its published figures show that sickness absence increased from 13.9 days per employee in 2022/23 to 14.6 in 2023/24 and 15.91 in 2024/25.
The council recorded 92,530 sickness days in 2024/25. Of those, 66,174 were long-term sickness days. It estimated the cost of sickness absence at approximately £7 million for the year.
That is a very useful illustration of what the figures mean in financial terms.
Sickness doesn't necessarily mean that a council simply pays someone their salary and loses nothing else. There can also be a range of other costs such as -
overtime costs for other employees;
temporary or agency staff;
recruitment costs;
delayed services;
increased workloads for colleagues;
management and occupational-health costs;
and, potentially, poorer services for the public.
The real cost can therefore be considerably greater than the salary attached to the absent employee.
Glasgow brings the issue into sharper focus and The latest TaxPayers' Alliance research provides an interesting comparison.
Glasgow City Council recorded 437,833 sickness days in 2024/25, equivalent to an average of 14.8 days per full-time employee.
Over three years, the council recorded more than 1.3 million sickness days. Glasgow has responded that it is one of the largest councils in Britain and that its workforce operates under considerable pressure.
COSLA has made a similar argument, pointing to years of workforce reductions, increased demand and pressure on employees providing essential services such as social care, education, housing and welfare support.
There is considerable merit in that argument.
But size doesn't explain everything. The useful measure is not simply the number of sick days.
It is sick days per employee.
And that is where comparisons become much more meaningful.
Should Scottish councils publish more?
This is where the TaxPayers' Alliance research raises an important question for Scotland.
The public can find sickness statistics, but the information isn't always presented in a simple, standardised form that makes comparisons between councils easy.
Imagine if every council published, every year:
total sickness days;
sickness days per employee;
short-term sickness;
long-term sickness;
percentage of the workforce on long-term absence;
main causes of absence;
cost of sickness absence;
agency and overtime costs associated with absence;
and the trend over the previous five years.
It would then be possible to see which councils were improving and which were getting worse.
More importantly, councillors could ask the difficult questions. Why has one department's sickness rate increased by 20 per cent?
Why is one council significantly above another?
What is being done about long-term absence?
How quickly are employees being supported back into work?
Are managers receiving adequate training in absence management?
And perhaps the most important question:
What is the council's target for reducing sickness absence?
We should be careful about the interpretation
There is a danger in turning this into an argument that council employees are somehow taking advantage of taxpayers. The evidence doesn't justify that conclusion.
Many people taking sick leave will be genuinely ill, and some council jobs are physically and psychologically demanding.
Social care workers, refuse collectors, road workers, teachers and many other council employees don't have easy jobs.
Mental health problems and musculoskeletal conditions can be particularly difficult and can lead to lengthy periods away from work.
But recognising those realities doesn't mean councils should stop trying to reduce absence.
Quite the opposite. A good employer should want to know why people are becoming ill, what can be done to prevent it and how employees can be helped back into work where appropriate.
That is good for employees as well as taxpayers.
Highland should be asking some uncomfortable questions
Highland Council is already aware of the problem.
Its own reports acknowledge that sickness absence has been rising and that it is considering further interventions to reduce it.
But with Highland's average now around 13.16 days, compared with the much lower figure it recorded previously, the council needs to demonstrate whether its interventions are actually working.
There is also a particular concern in some services.
If Communities and Place is recording nearly 19 days per employee, that deserves detailed examination.
Is the workforce ageing?
Are vacancies increasing workloads?
Are particular occupations responsible for most of the absence?
Is long-term sickness increasing?
Are managers intervening early enough?
And what is the financial cost?
These are legitimate questions for elected councillors to ask.
This is about more than saving money
There is another reason to take the figures seriously.
Highland Council, like every other Scottish council, is under enormous financial pressure.
Audit Scotland has repeatedly warned that councils need to transform the way they deliver services rather than simply make incremental savings.
At the same time, councils are being asked to maintain increasingly complex services with fewer resources.
If a council can reduce avoidable sickness absence, it potentially gets more productive working time without increasing the workforce. That could be enormously valuable.
Even reducing an average of 13.16 days to 12 days would represent a substantial amount of working time across a workforce the size of Highland Council's.
The saving would not simply be the wages associated with those days.
It could also mean fewer agency workers, less overtime, fewer delays and greater continuity of service.
Scotland needs a proper council sickness league table
Perhaps the most useful outcome of the TaxPayers' Alliance investigation is that it has started a debate about something which is often treated as an internal HR matter. It shouldn't be.
Council employees are ultimately paid from public money.
That does not mean taxpayers should know the medical details of individual employees — absolutely not.
But taxpayers are entitled to know how effectively their council manages sickness absence as a workforce issue.
Scotland already has the basic data.
Audit Scotland has demonstrated the scale of the problem: 2.65 million working days lost to sickness and an average of 13.9 days per employee in 2023/24.
Highland's own figures show that its position, once considerably better than the Scottish average, has moved sharply upwards.
And the latest evidence from individual councils such as Moray shows that some authorities are already approaching or exceeding 16 days per employee.
So perhaps it is time for a much simpler question to be asked at every council meeting:
How many working days are we losing to sickness, what is it costing the taxpayer, why is it happening — and what are we doing about it?
Because 2.65 million lost working days isn't just a statistic.
It represents work that didn't get done, services that may have been delayed and public money that had to absorb the consequences.
For councils facing unprecedented financial pressure, that is surely an issue that can no longer be left on the HR spreadsheet.
Read The Taxpayers Alliance report 15 August 2026 HERE
Note
Bill Fernie was a Highland councillor representing Wick and East Caithness up to 2017.
More about Bill's positions - needs updating