BBC staff took 91,991 sick days during the last financial year – that’s higher than the national average.
Figures published under the Freedom of Information Act show that between April 2015 and April 2016 the BBC’s 18,920 employees took, on average, 5.1 days off each for health reasons in addition to paid holiday.
This compares with an average number of sick days for London workers of 3.5 days annually. UK-wide, the average is 4.5 sick days a year.
And it looks like £340,000-a-year BBC News chief James Harding’s departments will also provide bosses at the publicly-funded broadcaster with cause for concern.
Across BBC news departments, 3,216 news staff were absent for a total of 41,410.9 days as these tables show:
For reasons which are not clear, BBC staff in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland far exceeded the national average when it came to taking time off for sickness.
A BBC spokesman said: “The total sick days this year has fallen by 14% compared to 2010 and the employee average is broadly in line with the national average. We take the health and wellbeing of our staff seriously, like any responsible employer, and provide a number of health related support schemes”.