ABSENCE rates at Clackmannanshire Council are the worst in Scotland according to performance indicators.

While efforts are being made to drive down the number of days lost to sickness or stress, officers are now thinking about bringing in expert external help in to tackle the problem.

Details were aired at local authority's Scrutiny Committee meeting at Kilncraigs last Thursday, February 15.

On average, the taxpayer lost out on 16.5 days of council work to improve and maintain the Wee County per local government employee, excluding teachers, in 2016-17.

That compares to a Scottish average of just 10.9 days per member of staff, placing the local organisation at the very bottom of the 32 strong league of councils in the country.

With Clackmannanshire Council employing more than 1,100 non-teaching people, that comes to about 18,150 days of work lost, “largely due to long term absences” – according to council papers.

Furthermore, the Local Government Benchmarking Framework for 2016-17 also highlighted that the situation is no different when it comes to teachers in the Wee County's schools.

Their sickness absence in Clacks is also ranked the worst north of the border. However, senior managers insisted the figures are “not absolute”, they are just indicators.

Having the worst performance in this field in Scotland is “not acceptable”, said committee chair Councillor Dave Clark, who roughly estimated that £10million had been lost in value through sickness at the council that year.

The council has since made its own estimate and puts the figure at a much lower £3million per year.

Calling for a report on staff morale to come to the chamber in the future, he said the local authority had a moral and employer's responsibility to staff.

Pastor David Fraser, of Alva Baptist Church, was sitting in the meeting as a religious leader to challenge and comment on issues affecting education.

Drawing from his personal experiences after speaking to people, he explained there is a feeling that teachers are often absent due to stress.

He argued this was the result of a culture where staff are pushed to deliver quantitative results and figures.

The pastor said: “We created a stressful environment for the people who should champion youngsters.”

He added: “People have to improve, but are we doing it right?”

When questioned, head of resources and governance Stephen Coulter told elected members different councils use different systems to record performance – meaning it is not always viable to draw comparisons.

He said handling long term absences can be “tricky”, better processes are now in place and more information is now available to line managers – they have been more aware when it came to using IT systems to get a grip on the issue.

He told the chamber: “We are tackling it in a much stronger way.”

When asked by Cllr Clark, he explained it is the duty of all managers to handle absences in their departments.

Unimpressed, the chair said: “When everybody is responsible, no one is responsible...”

The Wee County is not the first to consider the help of a third party to deal with the problem, but the committee did not inquiry what costs may be associated with the potential move.