(2) what the (a) total and (b) average number of days of sick leave taken by employees in her Department and its agencies was in each year since 1997.
Sick absence data for 2003 though to the end of March 2007 are available from sick absence reports published on the Cabinet Office website. The reports can be found on the following Cabinet Office webpage:
http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/who/statistics/sickness.aspx
Sick absence data prior to 2002 are not available without incurring a disproportionate cost owing to several changes of HR databases in use over the last 12 years which would necessitate an investigation of individual staff records.
Table 1 provides the number of staff who took long-term sick leave in 2008-09. Data on long-term sickness are not held for 2007-08 and cannot be gathered without incurring a disproportionate cost.
Number Headquarters 126 UK Border Agency 244 Identity and Passport Service 169 Criminal Records Bureau 63
Table 2 provides the total number of working days lost (WDL) and the average working days lost rolling year (AWDL RY) for the period from 2007 to 2009.
2007-08 2008-09 WDL AWDL RY WDL (FTE) AWDL RY Headquarters 20,685 6.6 15,023 5.50 Identity and Passport Service 43,917 11.7 36,831 9.59 UK Border Agency 194,517 11.2 167,211 9.70 Criminal Records Bureau 5,460 12.3 5,548 11.31 Notes: 1. 2007-08 data have been taken from sickness data produced for the permanent secretary management group. 2. 2008-09 data have been answered using DataView, the single source for all Home Office HR data. DataView uses data extracted as soon as possible after the last day of the calendar month from the Home Office’s four employee records systems: Adelphi for headquarters and the UK Border Agency (UKBA); Snowdrop for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS); IRIS for the Criminal Records Bureau; and ePayFact for pay and pensions purposes. UKVisas (previously FCO) and HMRC Detection staff who have transferred to UKBA will be added during 2009-10 as part of an ongoing improvement programme. Source: The March 2009 extract has been used to answer this parliamentary question.