Sick days in waste services have cost council £1m

The report also notes overspends of £87,000 on depot repairs and maintenance

Soaring levels of sick days in a council's waste services have racked up losses of more than £1m.

Thanet District Council documents show that in 2024-25 the authority overspent by more than £1.3m on its domestic waste and street cleaning services.

Of that money, about £1m was "primarily due to higher than historical and industry average rates of sickness absence", papers say.

Steve Albon, the council's cabinet member for cleansing and coastal services, said: "While rates of absence have been higher than we'd like, we have been focusing our efforts on improving staff welfare and creating more efficient processes and the picture is now improving."

He said the problem was due to manual workforce absence rates being "typically higher than other parts of the business".

Official documents show a "consequent reliance on agency staff across the entirety of the service, coupled with the additional street cleaning personnel".

The findings unearthed a staffing overspend, including agency and overtime, of just over £1m.

Agency staff are relatively common across the public sector, but they are often expensive, the Local Democracy Reporting Service says.

Additionally, the report notes overspends of £87,000 on depot repairs and maintenance, £75,000 for increased PPE costs, £103,000 for vehicle maintenance and hiring expenses, plus a £45k shortfall in bulky waste income.

The same documents tell of plans to recruit a human resources officer from the cleansing services budget to remedy the "persistently high sickness absence rates".