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Publication, Part of

NHS Sickness Absence Rates - April, 2021, Provisional Statistics

Official statistics

Publication Date:
26 Aug 2021
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
NHS Trusts, Hospital Trusts, Ambulance Trusts, Mental Health Trusts, Regions, Clinical Commissioning Groups
Date Range:
30 Apr 2009 to 30 Apr 2021

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NHS Sickness Absence Rates - April, 2021, Provisional Statistics

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Classification of Statistics

Please note: We intend to change the format of the COVID-19 sickness absence related data in the May 2021 publication, which is due to be published on 30 September 2021. The COVID-19 sickness absence tables and Power BI dashboard will be replaced by a CSV file. This will include a time series of data by staff group and organisation from March 2020 to the most recent month to allow users to perform their own analysis.

Please let us know if this causes any issues.

30 September 2021 00:00 AM

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Summary

NHS Sickness Absence Rates - April, 2021, Provisional Statistics

Highlights

Tables 1-4 (Monthly Sickness Absence Rates by NHS England region, Staff Group, Organisation Type and Organisation) from the quarterly Sickness Absence reports are published on a monthly basis on the same day as the Monthly workforce publication. This is to enable the data in these publications to be available on a more frequent and timely basis.

NHS Absence rates in April 2021

The overall sickness absence rate for England was 4.1%. This is slightly higher than March 2021 (4.0%) and lower than April 2020 (6.2%).

Regional and organisational type variation

The North West region reported the highest sickness absence rate in April 2021 at 5.0%, this is slightly higher than their rate in March 2021 (4.8%). The London region reported the lowest sickness absence rate in April 2021 at 3.5%, this is slightly higher than their rate in March 2021 (3.4%).

Ambulance Trusts had the highest sickness absence rate at 6.2% in April 2021, this is slightly higher than March 2021 (5.9%).

Clinical Commissioning Groups and Commissioning Support Units had the lowest sickness absence rate at 2.1% respectively, remaining relatively unchanged since March 2021 (2.1% for CCGs and 2.3% for CSUs).

Staff group differences

Support to ambulance staff reported the highest sickness absence rate in April 2021 at 7.4%. Ambulance staff, Support to doctors, nurses & midwives and Hotel, property & estates staff all reported the second highest sickness absence rate in April 2021 at 5.7%.

Staff Grade reported the lowest rate at 0.1% in April 2021.

Reason for sickness absence

Anxiety/stress/depression/other psychiatric illnesses is consistently the most reported reason for sickness absence, accounting for over 439,000 full time equivalent days lost and 28.3% of all sickness absence in April 2021. This remains relatively unchanged since March 2021 (28.8%).

COVID-19 related sickness absence

116,275 full time equivalent days (from a total of 1,550,455 FTE days lost) were lost due to COVID-19 related sickness absence in April 2021, equating to 7.5% of all absences recorded, compared to 10.8% in March 2021. (Please see COVID-19 related absence file in the Resources section below for further information on COVID-19 reported absence).

Key Facts

Last edited: 25 August 2021 2:58 pm