Jonathan Ashworth – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Ashworth on 2016-03-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of officials of his Department took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in each of the last five years; and what proportion of total sick leave that leave was in each such year.

Brandon Lewis

These statistics relate to absences recorded as “Mental Disorders” under the World Health Organisation categories of absence, which includes non-stress related absences such as depression. The figures therefore should not be read as being fully related to stress caused absence and it should also be noted that non-work related stress absences would also be recorded here.

Sickness absence due to mental health absences, in the Department were as follows:

Back in the Summer of 2014 DCLG paid for two staff to become mental health first aid Instructors so that a programme of mental health first aid could be rolled out across the Department. 32 staff have since become mental health ambassadors. The increase in the level of absences due to mental disorders in 2015 is likely to reflect more honest and open reporting of absence by staff following the work done by our Mental Health First Aiders to reduce the stigma that is sometimes felt by sufferers of poor mental health.

For the 12 month period ending December 2015, the Department’s overall absence rate was 6.5 average working days lost per member of staff. This is lower than the Civil Service average of 7.4 days, the public services average of 8.4 days and private sector services average of 8.2 days (figures from the October 2015 CIPD annual absence management survey).