Written question asked by Mark Simmonds (Conservative) on Wednesday, 18 May 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 23 May 2011. It was answered by Simon Burns (Conservative) on Tuesday, 7 June 2011 on behalf of the Department of Health.

NHS: Sick Leave

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what levels of staff sickness there were in the NHS in (a) 2008, (b) 2009 and (c) 2010 for each (i) hospital trust and (ii) primary care trust.

Answer: The NHS Information Centre (NHS IC) has published monthly sickness absence rates in a quarterly publication derived from the Electronic Staff Record since April 2009. These can be found on their website at:"www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/workforce/sickness-absence"Rates for individual hospital trusts and primary care trusts can be found in Table 5 of the Excel tables.There is no published sickness absence data for before April 2009 and the NHS IC does not publish annual rates.

Secondary information