HEALTH bosses have promised a crackdown after it was revealed that Redbridge Primary Care Trust (PCT) has the highest sick rate of any PCT in north east London.

More than six per cent of working days were lost to sickness last year compared with just 4.2 per cent for Newham PCT and 2.6 per cent for Barking and Dagenham PCT.

Among support nurses the figure reached 11 per cent and among allied health professionals the figure rose to more than 17 per cent.

Speaking at a board meeting of Redbridge PCT, director of strategy Conor Burke said: "We need to focus on that six per cent of people who account for sickness in our organisation and we need to be much more pro-active."

Long-term sickness of more than four weeks at a time accounted for 76.7 per cent of the days lost, and 98 employees accounted for 9,214 days between them in the year to April.

Mr Burke said: "We will see a lot of action on that in the near future and there will be a lot of dedicated support."

The board also heard that the stability of the organisation was threatened by an annual staff turnover rate of more than one in five.

Administrative and nursing posts have seen the highest number of quitters and earlier this month the PCT introduced exit interviews to find out why so many are going.

Mr Burke said: "I think the figures are worrying, particularly those for support staff. It's a competitive market where commercial organisations are able to compete with us and I hope we can start to address these issues to make it a more attractive career prospect."

Non-executive director Diana Roxburgh said that a healthy turn-over rate should be no more than 12 to 15 per cent and anything higher would produce discontinuities in the service provided.

She said: "It's troubling that nursing is appearing as the highest."