Introduction
Item 6, concerned sick leave, agency staff and its financial implications.1 Sick leave levels, “[Have] fallen further to 9.9 days at 30th April 2025.” Appendix 2says this amounts to 20,807 days per year. National statistics say, “There was also a fall in days lost per worker, to 4.4 in 2024…”2 Havering’s council is 125% above the national average at a cost of £2m p.a.
Stress, depression and mental health costs the council £610K and Muscular-skeletal costs £506K, both annually.3 These are the two biggest categories.
Councillors are a poor example for staff.4 In the six months to 5th July 2025, 55 councillors were scheduled to attend a total of 460 meetings. They attended 386 – a 16% absentee rate.
The council is rotting from the head down.5
Discussion
There were important contributions from David Taylor (1:55).6 He said that agency staff were healthier. At (2: 04) he said ‘Millennials’ were very sickly. His best point was (2:19) when he posited causes of muscular-skeletal sick leave (£506K). He suggested one cause might be ‘Working from home’ with poor working conditions. Jane Keane pondered ‘tolerated’ sick leave as a reason for sick leave. She then discussed domestic abuse and sick leave. Other contributions were made by Matt Stanton, Dilip Patel and Martin Goode.
Officers made few substantive replies to councillors with too many ‘getting back’ with emails later.
Conclusion
The committee is a joke. There was 41% councillor absenteeism at this meeting. This ruins institutional memory. The contribution of Phillippa Crowder (2:29) demonstrated the power of that memory. It also destroys any development of forensic debating skills. Scrutiny should be uncompromising but this committee is cosy and nice.
Innovative strategies for bringing Havering’s statistics in line with national levels don’t exist.7 Questions about dismissals for poor staff attendance weren’t asked. Likewise, challenging failed strategies was obviously infra dig.
Councillors are complicit in accepting Havering’s sick leave culture.
Notes
2 HR 2 – Appendix 1 and 2 OS Report – Data Dashboard.pdf See also Sickness absence in the UK labour market – Office for National Statistics Havering is trying to achieve 8 days of sick leave, which is, apparently a stretch target.
3 loc.cit Appendix 2b
4 Havering Councillors’ Attendance: 1st August 2023 – 24th January 2024 – Politics in Havering
5 Absentees: cllrs Ruck (he was present via Zoom which counts as an absence), Garrard, Godwin, Vincent and Anderson: 5 out of 12 (41%)
6 Annotator Player Timings refer to this webcast
7 Worse than that: the target set is 8 days sick leave, 3.6 days above the national level.
Politics in Havering 
Councillors are required to attend at least one meeting in 6 months or face automatic dismissal, unless given dispensation to remain in office by a majority of councillors at full council. I don’t agree with the rule, but it was used to remove Cllr Logan who couldn’t attend meetings due to severe illness.
In this term, two seriously ill councillors have received dispensation to remain in office, but depending on duration, it does create a democratic deficit, particularly in a hung council if councillors for whatever reason fail to attend meetings.
The irony of the new broom HRA “transparent & accountable” administration is there should be no excuse for non-attendance as the number of meetings overall has been drastically reduced, including by abolishing e.g. highways, health and crime & disorder committees, so non-attendance is outrageous really, considering they all receive a generous weekly allowance.
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There were three HRA members absent from the O/S Board on 3rd July. This is astonishing. But as Al Murray would say, *Rules is Rules*.
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The number of committees has been reduced and the size of the committees has been reduced too.
I’ll let you work it out, but I think you’ll find most councillors only have to attend a handful of meetings per year and leave the senior councillors to it, who in turn let the officers run the council.
To be fair, I suspect they’re just as demoralised as the rest of the population, so think it’s all a waste of time as successive governments have traduced local government, but nevertheless welcome the income.
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I agree
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