Sickness Absences and Agency Staff Usage 2020-25
Reference: 25-26325
Date response sent: 11/11/2025
Details of enquiry
- General sickness absence from 2020-2025: The total number of staff sickness absence days taken each year, broken down by year from 2020-2025.
- Categorisation of sickness absence: Does your organisation code sickness absences by specific category or reason (e.g. ‘mental health’, ‘burnout’, ‘flu’, ‘musculoskeletal issues’)?
- If yes, please provide the breakdown for each recorded sickness category for each year in the five-year period (2020-2025).
- If such categorisations have changed over time, please indicate when changes to categories or coding were implemented.
- Locum and agency staff usage from 2020-2025: The total number of locum or agency staff engaged in each year of the five-year period (2020-2025).
- If records permit, please detail the total expenditure on locum or agency staff for each year.
- If possible, please indicate whether the use of locum/agency staff was linked to covering staff sickness absences.
Response sent
- General sickness absence from 2020-2025: The total number of staff sickness absence days taken each year, broken down by year from 2020-2025.
This data is provided in the attached csv file.
- Categorisation of sickness absence: Does your organisation code sickness absences by specific category or reason (e.g. ‘mental health’, ‘burnout’, ‘flu’, ‘musculoskeletal issues’)?
Yes
a. If yes, please provide the breakdown for each recorded sickness category for each year in the five-year period (2020-2025).
This data is provided in the attached csv file
b. If such categorisations have changed over time, please indicate when changes to categories or coding were implemented.
Not applicable.
- Locum and agency staff usage from 2020-2025: The total number of locum or agency staff engaged in each year of the five-year period (2020-2025).
a. If records permit, please detail the total expenditure on locum or agency staff for each year.
The data requested is provided below, and is shown in financial years, which run from April to March.
| Locum and agency staff usage in Financial Years (April to March) | |||||
| Financial Year | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
| Agency Spend | £945,363 | £2,072,007 | £3,495,697 | £2,731,529 | £1,158,846 |
| Bank Spend | £1,264,911 | £1,331,383 | £1,130,628 | 1,112,798 | £963,113 |
b. If possible, please indicate whether the use of locum/agency staff was linked to covering staff sickness absences.
We do not hold our data in this way and cannot extract this data from our records.