MOST employers in the private sector monitor absences among staff to ensure that levels are kept to a minimum.

People with legitimate illnesses are not harassed but managers are expected to notice patterns, like people with no obvious sickness regularly taking Mondays off, and to tackle that with the individuals involved.

Such monitoring undoubtedly helps to keep the average number of days off sick taken by each employee in the private sector down to a figure of seven per year.

Absence rates in the public sector are traditionally higher than this and that perhaps has to do with a different culture - certainly stress and pressure levels are no worse than they are in the private sector.

At Blackburn with Darwen Council absences average 12.8 days a year with some departments like Social Services and Regeneration above 20 days.

These statistics would appear to place the borough's absence levels somewhere in the middle of any local authority league table.

They are dealing with our money and the public has a right to demand that councils operate as efficiently as the private sector.

That means having the same absence controls and not allowing workers to think of their bosses as "a soft touch."

What's surprising is that the clampdown being planned by Blackburn with Darwen Council wasn't introduced years ago.