NHS staff monthly sickness absence rates in London have risen by 41.3% to August 2025 relative to August 2015, according to data from NHS Digital.
This comes after NHS Digital released it’s monthly staff sickness absence data for August 2025 last month.
NHS Digital said ‘the sickness absence rate is calculated by dividing the sum total sickness absence days (including non-working days) by the sum total days available per month for each member of staff’.
Paula Delaney, senior regional officer for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) London, said: “Nursing staff are being driven to ill health from working in understaffed and under-resourced services.
“They’ve been working under immense pressure for far too long, and it simply isn’t sustainable for them.
“Nursing staff are trying to give the best care often at the expense of their own health. The system works against their efforts to do this, which leads to burnout and exhaustion.”
In both London and England as a whole, there was a noticeable relative increase in the sickness absence rate from 2020 to 2021 of 35.7%.
However, this could be related to the Covid-19 pandemic and precautions around Covid testing, NHS staff and subsequent isolation periods.
Although there has been an 8% relative increase in August last year in comparison to August 2024.
London followed a similar trend in absence rates to England, but at a consistently lower rate.
The new data showed London had an 8.2% lower rate of NHS staff sickness absences in comparison to the rest of England.
However, the region with the lowest sickness absence rate was the South-East of England.
The largest reason for staff sickness absences across all NHS staff was due to ‘anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illness’, which accounted for 30.9% of the total rate.
Mental health and psychiatric issues remain the largest reason behind all staff sickness absences, as they rose from 30.3% in July, the month before.
The data does not currently show whether the increase in the monthly sickness absence rate is related to an increase in NHS staff suffering from mental health issues.
However, this comes after a 2024 NHS staff Survey found that 41% of NHS staff reported feeling unwell due to work-related stress.
In August, 197,955 Full time Equivalent (FTE) days or 29.9% of NHS Nursing staff and Health visitors’ days lost due to staff sickness that month were due to various mental health and other psychiatric issues
A survey carried out by the RCN last year found that seven in ten nurses are working in excess of their contracted hours at least once a week, and two-thirds admitted to working when they should be on sick leave multiple times a year.
Delaney said: “New and urgent investment is desperately needed to grow the nursing workforce, ensuring staff are able to work in a safe environment and that patients get the best care.
“This must be accompanied by the introduction of safety-critical nurse-patient ratios in all health and care settings.”
NHS England was reached out to for comment.
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