Workers taking time off sick at Lancashire County Council (LCC) cost taxpayers £29.4million last year, the Citizen can reveal.

It equates to an average of 10.5 days lost for each of the 44,000 people employed by the authority -- and in some departments, it was as high as 19 days off sick per worker.

The private sector, by comparison, lost only 6.8 days per employee in sick leave in 2004.

The revelation comes after the county council's committee on performance improvement met to discuss sickness absence.

County councillor Keith Riley, chairman of the committee, said: "I want to make it clear that we do take the problem of absence seriously -- we are not blas about this at all.

"In the last year several staff have been dismissed because of unacceptable levels of absence."

But LCC are not the only public body in this area with a poor sickness record.

Figures released yesterday by Lancashire Constabulary showed that 9.6 working days were lost per police officer and 10.3 per staff member for the same period, April 2004 to March 2005

John Cridland, of the Confederation of British Industry, claims that while the public sector represents only 30 per cent of the UK workforce, it accounts for 40 per cent of the total number of working days lost to absence.

He said: "Let's be honest about this, there are some employees out there who will gladly award themselves a day off when they are in good health at the expense of their employers and hard working colleagues.

"If the public sector could reduce its absence rate to the private sector average, absence would fall by over 20million days and save the UK taxpayer £1.2billion."

Jane McLeod, head of human resources at the county council, admitted the level of absenteeism had increased, and said: "There is substantial room for improvement particularly in social services and care services."

Workers in those departments took an average of 19 days off sick per year.

She said the authority had considerably exceeded the target of losing no more than 9.1 days per employee, but blamed better reporting practices, in part, for the rise in the figures.

At Friday's meeting, Coun Tony Martin, who was responsible for resources during the period in question, said: "One third of our employees never take time sick, we need to get some sort of praise and award that encourages people to join that one third, like giving an extra day holiday for not taking time off."

Council leader, Hazel Harding, said that while she did not have time for people with "long weekenditis" she was very sympathetic to people on long-term sick and suggested the authority could consider making it easier to take half a day to go to a hospital appointment.