Freedom of Information Request: 0497 2019/20

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would would like to request the following:

1.  The number of working days lost to stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions by members of staff within the your trust, by year since 2009Please see table below. Please note that our sickness absence is recorded as calendar days rather than working days.

   It should also be noted that over the years a more robust process for reporting absence reasons has been implemented. Previously sickness could be recorded as ‘unknown’ however now sickness must be recorded against a number of pre-defined criteria. This explains the increase in calendar days lost due to stress/ anxiety 2009.

   Year	Reason	Calendar Days Lost
   2009	Stress/Anxiety	11674
   2010	Stress/Anxiety	17398
   2011	Stress/Anxiety	34901
   2012	Stress/Anxiety	44619
   2013	Stress/Anxiety	45753
   2014	Stress/Anxiety	55098
   2015	Stress/Anxiety	59964
   2016	Stress/Anxiety	65808
   2017	Stress/Anxiety	75143
   2018	Stress/Anxiety	77367
   2019	Stress/Anxiety	64984

2. The cost of losing these working days (based on wage multiplied by working hours lost).

Based on the definition above (wage multiplied by working days lost) we can estimate that the costs to the Trust for the past 2 calendar years are:

£5,174,661 (2018) £4,436,916 (2019)

Due to the merger of Heart of England NHS FT with University Hospitals Birmingham we can only supply estimates for this question for the past 2 years.

Staff will receive payment whether they are at work or off sick, hence this is not classified by the Trust as a cost. A cost would be where we cover someone’s sickness by paying for a bank/locum member of staff. The Trust does not record this information centrally and is therefore unable to fully respond.