COVID-19 Workforce Survey, week ending 14 January 2022

This report is part of a series of surveys of all councils in England and Wales, collecting key workforce data on how the sector is responding to COVID-19. An online survey was emailed to heads of human resources, or a nominated contact, in councils from England and Wales. The data requested related to the week ending the preceding Friday. The intention is that this collection is the single national source through which such data is gathered, and it will, as appropriate, be shared with government departments and others in addition to providing comparator information for councils.

This report relates to the survey sent out on 19 January 2022 and covers the week ending 14 January 2022. The overall response rate was 42 per cent and covered around a third of the total workforce.  

Key findings

• Of councils with unavailable staff, two-thirds (66 per cent) were unavailable because of non-COVID related sickness (or four per cent of all staff). Twenty-five per cent were unavailable because confirmed/suspected COVID (one per cent of all staff).
• There were 1,914 members of staff reported in the survey who were absent with symptoms that could be classified as long COVID. Just over nine out of 10 of these (93 per cent) had been off work for less than six months.
• When asked whether individual services had enough staff to run them normally or not, the top three worst affected areas were adult social care (directly employed), with 74 per cent of councils reporting some level of disruption, schools with 70 per cent reporting some level of disruption, and children’s services, 58 per cent of whom reported some level of disruption.
• When asked to assess the council overall, in terms of whether they had enough staff to run services normally or not, 53 per cent of councils reported they were not operating normally.
• Forty per cent of councils said there was a moderate risk that workforce capacity may negatively affect the council’s ability to deliver services. Eleven per cent said there was a high risk.