AMID concerns about an exodus of employees from Rossendale Council, a trade union survey of its workers points to low morale, fear of privatisation and remote managers as the causes.

At the outset, it has, of course, to be accepted that a one-sided exercise of this sort -- a virtual magnet for complaints -- was bound to attract negative responses.

But that does not mean that its findings or the problem itself can be discounted.

For only a few months ago it was revealed that the council had 77 posts that were either vacant or filled by temporary staff -- a considerable number for a small local authority like Rossendale.

Such a situation is not good for staff morale. The increase in workload and pressures on remaining employees can have a snowball effect of still more departing to escape these effects and of making recruitment of new employees more difficult.

Indeed, according to the trade union Unison, which probed the exodus with a questionnaire among staff, the word is out among local government employees that Rossendale Council is not a good authority to work for.

The council and its officials would do well to consider if this is the case -- not least because a full-strength, content workforce is a necessity in itself, but because council taxpayers in the Valley, who are already looking at an eight per cent rise in their county council precept, expect and are entitled to efficient, value-for-money services from their local authority.

And even if the litany of complaint in Unison's findings needs to be tempered with a touch of scepticism over the inevitably negative nature of survey, a positive step is indicated in the union's proposal that a working party of councillors, officials and trade union representatives be set up to examine the problem and recommend action. For some measure of this sort is evidently due.