A LOCAL authority branded the worst council in the country is carrying out an urgent inquiry into sickness levels.

The move follows a revelation that each employee at Rossendale Council could take more than three weeks off this year.

A report to be presented to members of the authority's finance and personnel committee on Tuesday reveals that between April and June this year staff took more than 2,000 days off sick.

The survey, compiled by treasurer Richard Hargreaves predicts staff will take the equivalent of 15.28 days off sick this year -- more than a week more than the national average of 9.6 days.

The authority, which was placed 237 out of 237 authorities in the UK following an Audit Commission inspection, said it had a number of people off on long-term sick which was bumping up the average for other staff.

But Unison branch chairman Gerry Foulds laid the problem firmly at the door of managers in the council and the lack of a personnel department. The Audit Commission published a draft report about the way Rossendale runs the borough in May and highlighted the authority as having one of the worst sickness absence rates in the country.

The report documents the sickness levels between April 1 to June 30, 2002. It revealed that 175 employees took one or more periods of sickness absence and 2,065 days were lost to sick leave.

The council has 541 employees and the average number of days sick per full-time employee was 3.82 which Mr Hargreaves predicted could lead to 15.28 days for the full year compared to council's annual target for 2002 to 2003 of 6.8 days.

Council leader Graham Pearson said: "Quite of few of the people taking sick leave are on long-term sickness but this does not come out in the report.

"However it needs reviewing urgently and it is one of the jobs Jim Metcalfe, the new interim human resources officer at Rossendale, is addressing. Hopefully he will come up with a strategy to reduce this level."

The Audit Commission was asked by Rossendale to inspect its services after best value reports continually assessed them as poor and unlikely to improve.

The council has been recommended to make progress on installing a new management team by early 2003.

The new interim chief executive James Gravenor will begin work on Monday.

Mr Foulds said: "My members have been under a lot of stress and are still under a lot of stress.

"I have members who do not know if they are going to be in a job, there is a shortage of staff and there are difficulties in recruiting staff, which all adds to the problems the staff already have.

"Morale is low because there has been no personnel department since the previous person took early retirement about four years ago and this has a reflection on the numbers of people taking sick leave."