COUNCIL staff absences have dropped to their lowest rates in six years, according to new figures released this week.

Nearly a quarter of employees at Darlington Borough Council blame absence on stress, depression and mental health.

Statistics, which have been announced in a council report, showed that the annual absence fell below the target rate.

The council's resources scrutiny committee will hear this week that the number of working days lost to sickness in 2008-9 was 9.46 days per full-time post.

Figures, which are available for the past six years, show that previous absence levels have ranged from 9.69 to a high of 11.19 in 2003-4. The council's target figure is 9.5.

The report to be put before the council said: "This reduction may be attributed to a number of measures that have been put in place to help reduce sickness absence, as detailed in the last report."

It added they included targeting resources into cutting absences, more detailed information to managers, a revised sickness policy and a new health and well being strategy.

The community services department had the highest rates of staff absences at 11.99 per post. Teacher absence was down by 1.3 days per post to 6.71 - only the corporate services team had a lower figure.

The largest reason for staff absence was cited as stress, depression and mental health, which accounted for 24 per cent of all absences.

Viral infections and musculo-skeletal problems were both responsible for one in six absences. Other common causes were because of operations, digestion complaints and back problems.

Pregnancies also accounted for two per cent of people taking time off. Ill-health also led to three staff taking early retirement.

Last year, 425 working days were lost because of accidents which occurred on council time. It was down seven per cent on the previous year but higher than both 2005-6 and 2006-7.

The figures also show that long-term sickness accounted for just less than half of the total days that staff were absent. It did not show the number of staff absent short or long-term.

More than a third of all council staff had zero absence during the year.