Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many days have been lost in the NHS due to staff absence and sickness in each of the last five years.
The number of days lost in the National Health Service due to staff absence other than sickness is not collected centrally. The number of days lost to the NHS as a result of sickness absence over the last five years is in the table below 1 .
Year | Sum of Full Time Equivalent sick days taken | Sum of Full Time Equivalent working days available | Sickness absence rate (%) |
2012 | 15,970,492 | 376,888,359 | 4.24 % |
2013 | 15,424,804 | 377,092,245 | 4.09 % |
2014 | 16,178,672 | 384,714,386 | 4.21 % |
2015 | 16,346,443 | 392,433,945 | 4.17 % |
2016 | 16,866,471 | 403,377,016 | 4.18 % |
Note:
1 Source: NHS Digital - NHS Staff Sickness Absence Statistics. The data includes the number of days between the start and end dates of each sickness absence episode, even those days on which the employee would not have normally worked. This has an effect of overestimating the total sick days.