Officer sickness figures

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/004130/S

Version Date: 26/01/2026

The Workforce Planning Department has provided the following information:

The sickness figures have been taken from the quarterly sickness reporting which contains the data as at the last day of the relevant quarter (31 Mar, 30 Jun, etc.) as it was recorded on the system at those times. Any individuals who were on an Extended Leave Break or External Secondment at the time have been excluded from the data.

Unfortunately, data for the period Oct – Dec 2025 is unavailable as the quality assurance process for the sickness data for this period is still underway, therefore the data below reflects 1 Jan – 30 Sep 2025 only. We anticipate that the data for the final quarter of 2025 will be available from early February 2026 should you wish to contact us again.

Please be advised that the sickness data within the snapshots does not have accurate working days lost in it, therefore any period of sickness that lasted longer than 5 calendar days has had a 5/7ths formula added to determine working days lost as accurately as possible (e.g. if the sickness period lasted 6 calendar days, 6 x 5/7ths = 4.29 working days lost). This is done to account for any potential weekends occurring within the sickness period, due to current system reporting limitations. This might not be 100% accurate as the data also does not take into account part time workers, flexible working patterns, etc. but this is how the Force are currently approaching sickness data for working days lost for our reporting.

1)  Please supply details of time off taken by Dorset Police officers on short term and long term 'Sick' by numbers or percentage from 1st January to 31st December 2025

2) Please stipulate how many of those officers were on 'Long term' sick leave, ie Requiring a Doctors certification, or 'Short term' self certification (under 7 days).

3) The average amount of days or hours lost from 1st January to 31st December 2025, broken down into A. Short term self certificating and B. Long term, certified by a doctor.