A TOWN hall boss today pledged to cure Burnley Council's sickness blues after admitting they were "unacceptable."

Peter Kenyon, executive member for best value and resources, said although levels of absence had dropped they were still a "significant" cost to council tax payers.

And an opposition councillor claimed progress on bringing the number of days off down had been too slow and they were costing £500,000 a year.

Coun Kenyon revealed that during 2002 staff took an average of 11 days off sick, down from 12.8 the previous year. Lancashire County Council has an average of 8.9 days a year, Blackburn with Darwen, excluding teachers, is 12.8 and the private sector seven.

A group set up to try and tackle the issue will meet for the first time in May.

He said "I accept there is a problem with the unacceptable level of absence in this council and that view is shared by all members of the executive committee, including the leader of the council.

"What needs to be acknowledged is the fact that there is significant cost to the council tax payer. The level of absence is coming down, but not fast enough."

Peter Doyle, group leader for the Conservatives, said: "There are around 624 equivalent full-time staff and every day about 30 of those are off sick.

"The average wage at the council is £14,500. The council also has to pay around 25 per cent cost on top of that for things like National Insurance contributions and pensions.

"So if you have 30 people off sick every day, that means there is always 30 vacant posts which cost the council tax payer more than £500,000.

"What we need to tackle is the small minority of Town Hall staff who play the sickness game."

Coun Kenyon added: "What is being proposed is tightening up of the system of monitoring of sickness levels.

"We are not in control of the rate of infection or the amount of stress our employees suffer, there will always be levels of sickness with an employer of our size."

In a report to Burnley Council, Coun Kenyon said: "The executive is to consider a report on changing the trigger points for manager action on sickness absence. This is part of of the process of seeking to get our average sickness absence figure per employee per year down into single figures."

A spokesman for the public sector workers union, UNISON, said that every town hall employee has an average 8.8 days off during the last three quarters of 2002. The spokesman added: "Of the 11 other Lancashire authorities we are now the fourth best. So there are eight other authorities with worse records and our record is not that bad and it is improving quite dramatically."