ALREADY shamed as the worst local authority in the country, Rossendale Council is now branded as being among the sickest.

For it is revealed that each employee of the Valley authority could be absent through illness for more than three weeks this year.

A survey by council treasurer Richard Hargreaves predicts that staff will take the equivalent of 15.28 days' sick leave -- more than a week above the national average of 9.6 days.

Can it be that Rossendale is exposed to so much more affliction than elsewhere? Hardly. But it does seem to have been suffering from extremely slack management -- in order to be condemned for both providing the worst services in return for its higher-than-average council taxes and for such high levels of absenteeism.

Evidently, these faults go hand in hand -- when efficient, value-for-money services can hardly be expected or delivered when droves of staff are absent.

It not only deprives Valley householders of the level of service they want and are entitled to, it puts unfair pressure on staff, creates poor morale and a sense of exploitation and hinders the retention of able and efficient employees.

And it may be that this situation has created a vicious spiral that has plunged Rossendale to the bottom of the heap in local government and helped to inspire the culture of defeatism that the government watchdog, the Audit Commission, found in its probe of the council. But a startling lack of urgency over the problem seems to have prevailed for years -- when it is disclosed that the council has not had a personnel department for some four years.

This lack of supervision in an enterprise employing more than 500 people at great public expense is bewildering and inexcusably scandalous.

Rossendale's new troubleshooter, new interim chief executive James Gravenor, who starts work on Monday, and new stand-in human resources officer Jim Metcalfe must give top priority to sorting out this mess and quickly slashing the number of 'sickies.'