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And while staff sickness appeared almost double the four per cent target, the actual figures were minuscule, said a councillor this week.

Carl John for the SNP praised the staff in customer and community services for their work in 2023.

He told a meeting of the performance committee: “There’s only 173 days lost out of 2500. That’s minuscule but shows up as being quite a high percentage because one or two long term absences can skew the figures.”

More than a million visits were made to council services, including libraries and partnership centres, in 2023.

Ralph Bell, the customer and communities service manager, gave an overview of front-facing council services returning to normal after two and half years of disruption through the Covid lockdown.

Services included libraries, partnership centres, community centres, registrars, the museum service and customer inquiries.

Mr Bell said: “Across the service areas in the last financial year we have had over one million visits.”

He said there had only been 43 service complaints, 22 of which were not upheld.

“Considering the footfall, it is a good reflection on our front-line officers and customer satisfaction results,” he said.

Most front-facing services run six or seven days a week, including libraries. West Lothian maintains 14 libraries, many now operating in redesigned partnership centres.

Mr Bell said that digital innovation had helped maintain the library service through the pandemic and digital lending had flourished during lockdown.

Actual book issues have still to rise to pre-pandemic issues but library visits alone for the last year were around the 450,000 mark.

Mr Bell said that the library service had developed to operate interactive reading and learning sessions, as well as accommodating groups such as Lego clubs.

Customer self help programmes developed during the pandemic are also popular. The self service kiosk in libraries sees more than 70 per cent of the book issues.

Mr Bell acknowledged that the staff sickness absence target of four per cent was hard to meet but levels had been under that for the last three months of 2023.

West Lothian services fight back after Covid