Councillors raised concerns about “troubling” levels of staff sickness.

New figures show that staff at St Albans District Council took an average of 8.8 days off sick in the year 2010/11 – slightly less than last year but still higher than it should be, according to council leader Julian Daly.

Councillor Daly, speaking at a cabinet meeting last night, used the first public gathering of his new Conservative administration to highlight several areas of concern about the running of the council.

Turning to the issue of absenteeism, he said: “I find these sickness statistics very troubling as they are almost double the rate of what is found in the private sector.”

Council chief executive Daniel Goodwin agreed that more work needed to be done to tackle the problem. He said: “It has got a bit better - however I agree that the number of working days lost to has got to come down. We felt that that target of the previous year [7.43 days] was achievable but we did deal with a period of flu during the year which was worse than normal but, nevertheless, that is an issue."

Mr Goodwin also revealed that a number of issues of long-term sickness had now been resolved – something that should be reflected in next year’s figures.