Essex Police Federation is calling for more money to be put into the occupational health and welfare budget to help sick officers get back on the beat.

Figures just released by the Home Office reveal Essex Police officers had an average of 14.22 days off sick a year - the third worst sickness record in Britain.

It is a far cry from five years ago when the Essex force had the second best sickness record in the country, with an average of just over seven days off per officer.

Depression and stress of the job have been some of the pressures cited by Essex Police Federation chairman Dave Jones as driving officers to their sick beds.

Terry Spelman, joint branch board secretary for the federation, also sits on the sickness management group.

"Sickness levels are up," he said. "Stress is the in-word and people perhaps used to go off under different auspices."

"More and more people are going off with stress and I suppose there is the pressure there. There have been great changes over the last year with the new deployment policy."

He added: "There have been extra pressures. There is more out there with less officers. Budgets are tight, but we would like to see more money put into the occupational and welfare budgets to get more to help people get back to work quicker."

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